


deeper than swords (the sun and stars remix)

by specficslut (homosociality)



Series: home as a borderless metaphor [1]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cultural Differences, Erik Lehnsherr Cries His Way Through Sex, Erik Lehnsherr Defense Squad, Extremely Dubious Consent, Forced Marriage, Honestly Charles What Are You Thinking, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mpreg, Non-Consensual Touching, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:35:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25236280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homosociality/pseuds/specficslut
Summary: Erik has been traded to a foreign king for a chest of gold and a hundred bushels of grain. In Westchester, he must learn to start a new life... and navigate the roles that have been thrust upon him, whether concubine or courtesan, consort or slave.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Series: home as a borderless metaphor [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1868485
Comments: 32
Kudos: 283
Collections: X-Men Remix Madness 2020





	deeper than swords (the sun and stars remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flightinflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/gifts), [Ireliss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ireliss/gifts), [Gerec](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerec/gifts).
  * Inspired by [sun and stars (Tribute to the Horde Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19716688) by [Ireliss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ireliss/pseuds/Ireliss). 
  * In response to a prompt by [Ireliss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ireliss/pseuds/Ireliss) in the [xmen_remix_madness2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/xmen_remix_madness2020) collection. 



> Warnings: Erik is not a slave, but he thinks he is; one use of an ableist slur (by the disabled character) & one use of a misogynistic slur by a main character; bleeding during loss of virginity; non-consensual touching by a villainous character.
> 
> This is not precisely a role-swap of Gerec’s “Tribute to the Horde” and ireliss’s “sun and stars,” because the Genosha depicted in this fic has slightly different gender roles for omegas than it does in the fics it was inspired by.
> 
> Title from _A Song of Ice and Fire_ quote, "Fear cuts deeper than swords."
> 
> This is all, indubitably, indescribably, [flightinflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/pseuds/flightinflame)'s fault.

Erik misses his horses.

He’d thought he’d have one more ride before he was mated off to the telepathic King of Westchester, one more chance to feel freedom running through his hair, one more moment with the palfrey that he had reared himself for peacetime pursuits. But that morning Westchester had sent a carriage, a solid wooden contraption pulled by thick, plodding steeds, and Erik’s last hope for a moment of freedom before he became—whatever it is he will become, a bride or a slave or a whore—had withered on the vine.

Shaw is escorting him to Westchester in victory. In exchange for Genosha no longer making costly, casualty-heavy raids on Westchester’s borders, Genosha receives a chest of gold in tribute yearly and a small portion of Westchester’s harvest. To reward Westchester’s willingness to see reason, the King gets Erik, the son of the old warlord, whom Shaw had overthrown; a prince without a throne, good for nothing now except an empty gesture of goodwill to make the treaty negotiations between Genosha and Westchester more palatable. 

Erik kneels on the hard wood of the carriage floor, stripped naked by Shaw himself before he’d been pushed into the carriage, and _hates_. He does not shiver, because he is his father’s son, and though the day is cold and bleak, he will not show any sign of weakness, not to Shaw, not to the man whose property he will become in just hours. He is stronger than that. He misses his armor too, though.

Shaw, his legs crossed, lifts Erik’s chin with the tip of his shoe. “I will be sorry to see you go, my boy,” he says. Erik says nothing. “I had hoped to claim you for my own one day. You’re so beautiful, Erik. You’ll please the King of Westchester, won’t you? You’ll soften the humiliation of being bested by a superior force.” Shaw laughs. “Or perhaps he’ll take his frustrations out on you. Perhaps if you only smiled a little more, it wouldn’t be so tempting to shove a cock down your throat and make you choke on it.”

Erik turns away. It’s Shaw that took them to war with Westchester, and Shaw who benefits most now that they’re making peace. Erik doubts that the Genoshan warriors will see any of the gold Westchester will send, just like they hadn’t seen any of the first chest of gold Westchester had sent last week. The harvest will help, at least. Erik clings to that thought. Perhaps he is only a tool to assuage the tattered remnants of the King of Westchester’s pride, but that’s not nothing. When winter hits, fewer of his people will starve. Fewer babes will die. That’s worth it. That’s worth it, Erik tells himself. He may not be saving his people from a great and terrible fate with his sacrifice, but he is serving his people in some small way, and that’s all he had ever wanted to do.

The ground shifts under the carriage, from dirt to cobbles, and Erik begins to hear sound outside; the call of loud voices, the babble of many people talking at once. He’s tempted to peek out the window, but he keeps his gaze down instead; no need to give Shaw more ammunition. The bump and clatter of the carriage over the stone road makes his knees ache, but he doesn’t shift. He remains perfectly still, the very image of a lifeless statue, a toy. Is that what the King will want, just as Shaw implied? A toy to play with?

He _must_ stop thinking of worst-case scenarios. Shaw has his own reasons for wanting Erik as scared and as unsettled as possible, not least of which is a deep-rooted hatred for Erik’s family line and plain sadism. He focuses instead on the chill prickle of the air against his skin. Still, his heart begins to race as the carriage’s movement begins to stutter, a halt-and-forward pattern, and then slows to a stop entirely. The carriage door opens and Shaw climbs out. He looks back at Erik. “Come,” he commands. “Time to begin your new life.”  
  
  
  
Westchester is huge.

Stone buildings sprawl in every direction. The castle looms over them, the biggest structure Erik, whose people are nomadic, has ever seen. He can’t help but crane his head up, and up, his eye following the long line of ravens perched on the towers. The cobbles are cold and rough against his bare feet, and he curls his toes against them in protest. It is colder here outside the carriage, and his determination not to shiver is put to the test.

“Erik,” Shaw snaps. Of course he’s not awed by the immensity of Westchester’s buildings, the tall siege walls all around them and the people milling about in strange clothes. He’s been here before, for negotiations. Erik glares without thinking, but when Shaw raises his hand to strike him, he drops his gaze and mutely follows. He will not be introduced to his—mate? master?—with marks from Shaw’s abuse marring his skin like a battered omega.

They’re led to a small chamber. Erik holds his head high and walks after him, though people all around him turn and stare, at his nakedness or at Shaw in his furs and leathers, he doesn’t know. The room Shaw leads him to is small, a stone table in the center of it, lamps set in sconces around the room. Two beta men await there. They avert their eyes from Erik and speak only to Shaw in the rolling Westchesterian tongue.

Shaw listens, then smirks, and Erik’s stomach sinks. That smirk means nothing good. “They will assess your fitness to be delivered to their King,” he says. Erik doesn’t understand, and it must show on his face, because Shaw adds, gloating, “Your virginity, Erik. They want to check that you’re a virgin.”

Erik flushes. He glances at the stone table, then looks pointedly away from it. “Can’t you tell them—?” Erik asks, hating the plea in his voice.

“I promised them a virgin, but it seems they want to make sure of it themselves. Get on the table, Erik. They say that if you don’t, one of them will hold you down.”

Erik gets onto the table. The cold stone sends gooseflesh racing down his body. One of the betas says something to Shaw; Shaw translates, “Hands and knees,” and Erik begrudgingly climbs the rest of the way onto the table and gets on his hands and knees. One of the beta men spreads his buttocks so that his hole, which twitches under their scrutiny, is exposed to the cold air. The other probes gently at it with his fingers. Erik flushes with humiliation. These are men of no consequence, medical men at best, staring at him as though he’s a piece of meat, about to put their fingers in him and test his tightness, and he has never been so dishonored and ashamed in his life. Is this how the rest of his life in Westchester is going to go? If the King wanted to treat him well, surely he would come inspect Erik himself, or send one of his honored generals or advisers to do it?

In Genosha, only the most honored touch the warlord’s consort. Even Shaw’s men, who had watched their leader grope and disdain him, had never handled him roughly, respecting his status as the once-prince and an omega of value. And here are these _servants_ , _touching_ him, and the one running his finger along his rim eases the tip of it into Erik’s hole, and he’s not wet because this is the worst feeling in the world, and it hurts a little bit. Erik breathes and thinks of his people, his people who are counting on him not to thrash and fight, and tries his best to relax. The man gently works the rest of his finger into Erik’s body.

He can sense Shaw’s greedy gaze on his body. Shaw had wanted him for himself, Erik knows, but had been too canny to take Erik to bed immediately after murdering his parents and siblings, in case a virgin omega could be used as a bargaining chip later. Erik is grateful, he supposes, that he’s not marrying Shaw. The idea of being taken in front of all his people by the monster who overthrew his parents and the generals that helped him do it sends a chill through him, like an ill wind has blown through his bones. Erik tenses when he feels a second finger pressing against his hole, but the man doesn’t push further; he only pumps the one finger in and out twice before withdrawing. Erik comes back to himself, realizing that he’s panting. 

“You can get down now,” Shaw says smugly, and Erik, his legs shaky, does. One of the attendants says something to Shaw, with the tenor of _there’s one more thing_ , and brings out—

—a suppression collar.

“No,” Erik says, realizes where this is going the moment he lays eyes on the familiar dark whorls of the runes engraved in the collar. He looks at Shaw, who is impassive—Shaw doesn’t like suppression collars any more than Erik does, he thinks it’s an insult to their innate gifts—”Please, don’t, there’s no need—”

The attendant says something in Westchesterian. “You’ll be in the King’s bed,” Shaw translates. “They want to make sure you won’t murder him in your sleep.” He looks almost kind as he says, “It’ll come off. Eventually.”

Erik shakes his head mutely.

“Then I’ll take you back to Genosha and mate you myself,” Shaw snaps.

Erik’s hands are shaking as he bends and lowers his head so that the attendant can buckle the collar around his neck. The moment his metal-sense cuts off, tears spring to his eyes and a pounding headache starts. He blinks them away, feeling abruptly deaf, or senseless—vulnerable, in a way that he’s never been in his life. Everything seems muffled. He knows the collar at his neck is made of metal, but he can’t _feel_ it anymore, and that knowledge jars and disturbs him. He tugs at it listlessly; it’s not tight enough to bruise or chafe, but without his gift, there’s no way he can undo it. He’ll try, later, working his fingers into the seams until blood gathers under his nails, not because he wants to kill the King, as everyone fears, but because he just wants to _breathe_ —it’ll feel like so long since he’s taken a real _breath._

Shaw takes him by the elbow. The attendants flank them, murmuring to Shaw. “Come,” Shaw says, and whether this is a translation or not Erik doesn’t know, “the feast is waiting.”  
  
  
  
The palace seems even bigger on the inside than it did on the outside, with staircases stacked on top of passages running through hallways that seem to have no end. Erik stumbles at first, vaguely dizzy from the power suppression—he’s powerful, and the powerful always struggle with it most—but steadies soon enough, if nothing else to stop Shaw tugging sharply at his elbow whenever he pauses. They go up a flight of stairs, down another, and deep into the castle until Erik loses all sense of direction, which is disorienting in its own way; he’s never been further than a tent-flap away from the sun and the stars, and here neither have any dominion. To distract himself, Erik asks Shaw, “When will I be given the herbs to start my heat?”

Shaw’s impatient expression melts away to one of dark amusement. “My boy, Westchesterians do things differently,” he says, in a faux-paternal tone that had rankled even when Shaw had been nothing more than one of his father’s soldiers. “They won’t be inducing your heat today.”

Erik is old for an virgin omega, nearly twenty—first he had been kept from taking lovers because of his royal blood, then because he’d been kept under armed guard after the coup—but he knows how sex works. He was brought up knowing the rituals he would one day take part in, that, with his consent, he would be given or traded to a fellow chieftain, that he would be taken under the stars by the chieftain and his most trusted generals, that he would breed and birth the heirs to both his own line and his husband’s. Shaw certainly liked to tell him in detail what he would have liked to do to him, were Erik any other omega who could be taken without consequence and not an almost-prince. He knows that a proper mating needs a heat. What is this, then, if not a mating—what does the King want from him—?

The attendants push open a large set of doors, and abruptly the babble of people speaking a language he doesn’t understand rises all around him. The men flanking them stay behind as Shaw steps into a large chamber, high-ceilinged, with long low tables filled with untouched food arranged along the walls, and drags Erik after him. Silence spreads, slow and thick, as they’re noticed. Erik can feel eyes on him, examining his nakedness, assessing him like a piece of horseflesh, and whispers began to spread through the silence, voices raised in what Erik can’t tell is scandalized horror or delight. He glances around, taking in the high stone walls, the press of people. It’s not quite what he had expected from his mating, it would be no ritual under the stars, but it is close enough. He tries not to think about how there are no furs or bedding on the hard ground to soften his struggles. If the King wishes him to be uncomfortable on the cold stone, he will be uncomfortable. He’s been through worse.

The food smells good. Erik’s stomach grumbles. He hasn’t eaten all day, save for sips of water begged from Shaw in the carriage.

At the head table, a man rises.

Erik looks at him from under his eyelashes, demure enough not to offend—if he’s the type of alpha that takes offense to that sort of thing, like many Westchesterians are—and examines his rich, thick clothing in the style which seems so repressive and heavy to his Genoshan eyes, embroidered with gold and silver thread along the cuffs and hems. He is older than Erik, but not yet old enough, Erik thinks, for that streak of gray in his hair to be anything but premature. His knuckles are white on the table as he stares at them, his coloring fairer than Erik’s, even fairer now that he is staring at him with such—intensity. He has very striking blue eyes.

Flanking him must be his generals and advisers. Two men, one with a thick ruby pair of spectacles that must cover some kind of gift, one short and burly and scowling; two women, one dark-skinned with a lovely shock of white hair, one—gods and goddess—with blue skin. Erik eyes her curiously. Perhaps this won’t be so bad after all? “Which of the generals shall I mate with first?” he asks Shaw quietly, hoping it’ll be one of the women, or perhaps the man with the glasses. The short, hairy man looking at him with such displeasure is a little frightening.

Before Shaw can answer, a smirk already playing about his mouth, the King snarls and bites something out in clipped, _furious_ Westchesterian. 

Shaw responds in the same tongue, smooth and confident, utterly uncaring of the tension sparking between the Westchesterians. Easy for him; his gift is strong enough to blaze a path through every one of the guards and courtiers and walk back to Genosha unscathed. Erik, collared and suppressed, is only mortal now. The King spits something out, and in an instant the thickset general has vaulted over the table and is walking toward him. Erik’s breath catches in his throat. Now? Without any ceremony, any feasting—Erik’s heart flutters in his throat—he should—he should move—he should get down and present for the alpha—but his limbs are thick and unresponsive and everything feels slow as honey dripping from the spoon around him—

The alpha snaps something and Shaw steps back, and Erik tells himself to move, damn it, he’s better than this—but before he can, the alpha reaches him and doesn’t push him down impatiently, doesn’t seem angry that Erik is standing there like a lump and not the willing and pliant omega he’s supposed to be. He undoes his cloak, but instead of reaching for his shirt and trousers, he wraps the cloak around Erik instead—it is thick with the scent of the alpha, and Erik finds it unaccountably comforting, even if the alpha himself looks stern and unforgiving. Erik hesitantly takes the cloak, not sure why the alpha wouldn’t just spread it on the ground if it’s meant to cushion their mating. Does he want Erik to… wear it? He decides to stand as still as possible and only move when he’s told to.

He steals a glance at Shaw, who is still arguing with the King. The King glances at Erik—his cheeks color, and he makes a gesture, and a young beta woman rises from beside his advisers and moves swiftly to Erik, her hair glowing like red fire under the lamplights. She smiles at him, kind, and when she glances at his nakedness she flushes and turns away. “Come with me,” she says—in _Genoshan!_ —and Erik, so grateful to have direction once again, follows her out of the grand hall into one of the winding passages like the one he’d taken to get there. “I am Jean,” she says as she leads him unerringly through the castle corridors. Erik can’t imagine one day being as confident and clear-eyed within the tall stone walls of this castle as he was underneath the open sky. “The King’s ward.”

“Erik,” Erik says softly.

“It is lovely to meet you, Erik,” Jean says firmly. “Are you hungry?”

 _“Yes,”_ Erik says fervently. Jean smiles a little sadly.

“I’ll have the servants bring up something. I’m sorry about the feast,” she adds awkwardly, and Erik shrugs, not sure what she means. Jean nods at a pair of guards, each holding halberds, stationed on either side of an imposing set of wooden doors. She stretches out a hand and they creak open slowly, and Erik is struck with dual feelings of awe—as he is whenever someone uses their gift—and raging, terrible jealousy. He tugs at the collar again, winces when it digs into his skin. Jean doesn’t seem to notice; she pulls out a chair for him and gestures for him to sit, and he does, looking around the opulent room. There’s a four-poster bed with a thick velvet canopy that takes up most of the room, a great lit fireplace on one wall and on the opposite wall a small study area that is thick with books and papers. He picks up one out of curiosity, but his eyes slide over the foreign writing.

“I’ll get you some clothes,” Jean says, and slips away to an attached room with a lighter set of doors. She comes out with a light silk tunic and leggings, broader in the shoulder than Erik is used to but shorter in the legs, and places them on the table in front of Erik. He puts them on, because it seems like that’s what she wants him to do, though he is confused. This is going the opposite way he had expected. Perhaps the King likes to strip his omegas himself. He wraps himself more tightly in the cloak as Jean goes to the door and accepts a tray of fruit and bread. She sets it in front of Erik, and he thanks her. The King’s ward. It wouldn’t do to get on her bad side, not when Erik doesn’t know how much power he has.

“You speak Genoshan?” he asks. The fruit is strange, with a thick rind and sweet flesh. He tries to peel the flesh away from the white pith without making too much of a mess.

Jean’s eyes crinkle. “I speak a lot of languages. More than Charles. He sends me places as a diplomat, and I like learning languages besides. I interpreted the negotiations for Charles and Lord Shaw. Apparently I’m better at Genoshan than Lord Shaw is at Westchesterian.”

Her accent is heavy, but she speaks with impeccable grammar and vocabulary. “You’re very good at it,” he says, and she smiles at him brilliantly. “Charles?”

Jean colors. “The King’s name,” she says. “I beg your pardon. I’m used to a certain familiarity with him. He all but raised me after my parents died.”

Charles. His mate’s name is Charles. Erik’s mouths it, his tongue rolling over the foreign syllables. Of course he won’t address him by name until he’s given permission, but it brings abruptly home his duties, and he puts the hunk of bread he had been gnawing on away, abruptly no longer hungry. “Where is this?” he asks Jean.

Jean bites her lip. “Charles’s bedchambers,” she says slowly, as though she’s not sure whether there’s a trick in the question. “Charles will come meet you here after he’s dealt with Lord Shaw.”

“But… won’t I be returning to the feast?”

“If you want to eat anything else, I can get it for you,” Jean says. “This is just what the kitchen had available on short notice.”

“Not for food,” Erik says a little impatiently. “To be claimed.”

Jean colors. Her fingers curl into a fist on the table. “No,” she says a little sharply. “Charles will claim you in private, in here. There won’t be any… you won’t have to… deal with anyone else.”

Alarm bells begin to clang in Erik’s mind. He won’t be claimed in public? He won’t be mated with Charles’s generals? Does Charles… does the King not want a true union with him? Shaw had told him that he was to be Charles’s mate, not his bedslave, not his toy, but Shaw _lies._ Perhaps the King only wants a mistress, or—or worse. Erik remembers the fury on Charles’s face when he’d looked at him, bare and unadorned, and wonders if his appearance doesn’t please him. Perhaps Shaw had told him to expect someone more beautiful than Erik, and Charles felt that Erik’s presence was a swindle.

Has he made a mistake already? All he’s done is present himself to the King. A deep, wounding hurt bubbles in Erik. He understands that this situation isn’t ideal for Westchester—a political marriage to cement an alliance at best, a humiliation at worst—but. But. He had thought. He had hoped that his future mate would see him as, if not an equal, at least something valuable, at least the mother of his heirs, a companion to accompany him through life. Not—not this.

Perhaps he should have let Shaw fuck him after all. Being Shaw’s mate surely couldn’t be worse than this—this humiliation.

“There will be no one but us?” Erik asks. His hands are trembling. He balls them into fists and presses them into his thighs, into the soft linen of his leggings.

“No one,” Jean says, as though it is a reassurance. “Oh—tomorrow we will check the sheets, to make sure that the King, ah, found his release, and you bled.”

 _Bled?_ What in the heavens is the King going to do to him to make him _bleed_? Erik modulates his breathing, in and out, steady. He has never minded bleeding for his people—his battle scars prove it. This is just… another kind of battle. Jean is looking at him, concerned, as though it is perfectly normal for an omega to bleed during sex. Erik wants to curl up in the alpha general’s cloak and hide under the bed.

He doesn’t. So what if he is meant to be nothing more than Charles’s whore? So what if he has fallen, from a prince of his people to another King’s slave? He had known this was a possibility, even if it hadn’t really sunk into his bones until this moment. His life had been over the moment Shaw had cut down his mother where she stood, and this must be hell, this must be what awaits princes who aren’t strong enough to protect their families. He can endure this. If he could survive that, he can endure this.

“It’s not so bad,” Jean says. “You’ll be all right.” Erik nods mutely. What else can he do? Run? The time for running has long past.

A sound in the hallway. Jean turns her head. Erik stares at the food, wishing he had more time.

The doors push open—not with Jean’s telekinesis, but with the efforts of the two guards standing on either side of the entrance—and in walks the King.

The King—Charles—is blank-faced and impenetrable. In the firelight, the embroidery on his cuffs gleam, as does the golden crown resting on his head. He uses a crutch to walk, moves slowly and deliberately, but when he sets the crutch by the foot of the bed he gets over the table well enough without it. He speaks to Jean, the rolling vowels and clipped consonants of Westchesterian slipping off his tongue, as difficult to understand as the speech of a babbling brook, as the rustle of trees in the forest. Jean responds in kind, and after a brief back-and-forth, she stands, dusts off her dress, and says to Erik, “I’ll leave you now. Do not worry too much, all right? You will be fine.”

She’s kind. And maybe the King will be a gentle lover, in spite of… whatever it is he’s going to do to make Erik bleed. It’s just everything else he’s worried about.

She slips out the door, and the guards close it behind her. The King takes her seat, across from Erik, who stares at him before he remembers that Westchesterians like their omegas docile and he glances down at his lap, where his fingers are twisted in the fabric of his leggings.

The King says something; the annoyance in his tone is clear. Erik glances back up. The King’s expression softens when he meets Erik’s eyes, so Erik keeps looking at him. Isn’t the King supposed to be a telepath? A powerful one, too; Erik remembers Emma’s sharp-edged envy. Why hasn’t he linked them mind-to-mind so they can speak? Or does it not work on languages?

The King pushes the tray of food toward Erik questioningly, and Erik takes some kind of berry from a small bowl. Its juices burst in his mouth. It is sour. Erik tries not to make a face, but from the soft chuckle of the King across from him, he’s not sure he succeeds. The King watches him eat, nudging the tray toward him whenever he falters, until it is clear but for a few crumbs and the rind of the strange fruit. Perhaps the King doesn’t like how skinny he is; he knows he’s lost weight as Shaw’s captive. Perhaps that’s what displeased him about Erik before?

The King pushes the tray aside and beckons. Erik goes to him.

Charles pulls him down to sit in his lap. He takes the alpha general’s cloak and discards it, drawing Erik closer, rubbing his scent into Erik’s skin—is he so possessive already? Of a slave? Erik can feel the heat of Charles between his thighs, the faint scratch of barely-visible stubble against his neck, and kneads his fingers into the King’s shoulders, shuddering. Charles speaks gently to him, words that Erik doesn’t understand, but he recognizes the tone; he used that tone when soothing skittish horses. The King’s breath is hot against his skin. Charles inhales deep lungfuls of Erik’s scent, eyes Erik with a greed that Erik is familiar with but also a kindness that he is not, slips his hands down to fit around the curve of Erik’s ass. He murmurs something in Westchesterian, something that has the vague shape of praise. Erik ducks his head and concentrates on the heat creeping up his spine.

The King tips his face up and captures his lips in a kiss.

Erik opens for him, lets Charles plunder his mouth, lets him sink deeply into it as Erik tries to stifle moans against his lips. The kisses are short but searching, as though the intensity is too much to maintain for too long, and when they break apart, Charles runs his thumb against the seam of Erik’s lips, mapping the spit-slick topography of Erik’s mouth. He searches Erik’s eyes for—something. Willingness? Wantonness? Erik, overcome by his own instincts, rubs himself against Charles’s body, trying to mark him with his own scent as surely as Charles has marked him with his, though it’s not his place, though he’s just a whore playing at a prince. But Charles’s eyes darken with arousal, so he can’t have screwed up that badly.

Charles pushes him gently off of his lap and stands. He doesn’t carry Erik to bed—his leg?—but leads him there by the hand. Erik sits on the bed, surprised by how plush and soft it is—there’s no way to grip it to push back against Charles’s thrusts—how is the King meant to fuck him on this? The King reaches for the hem of Erik’s tunic, pulls it up over his head. Why bother giving him clothes if he was just going to strip them off, Erik wonders.

When Erik is bare, he tries to help the King undress, but the buttons are small and the fastenings are complicated, and the King chuckles before he gently moves Erik’s hands away and takes his clothes off himself. In the firelight, he looks strong and capable, with his broad shoulders and thick arms, finely muscled strength rippling under his skin. Erik moans and tries to turn onto his hands and knees, but Charles catches him and lays him out on his back. He tugs at Erik’s knees to part them, and settles himself between Erik’s thighs.

He begins by running his hands slowly over Erik’s skin, until he’s gasping and hard as he’s ever been. He lingers over Erik’s battle scars, begins to ask something, but cuts himself off when he remembers that Erik can’t answer. His expression is shuttered though, and Erik watches him warily. Is he displeased with Erik’s scars? Did he want someone unmarred, as virginal in skin as he is in body? …Is that why he’s taking Erik in private, like he’s ashamed of him?

Charles sees his guarded expression and runs a calming hand over his side, smiles ruefully. Erik feels a tiny, hesitant smile curve his lips in return. Charles is certainly making an effort to make sure Erik is willing and unafraid, or at least that he won’t start crying at any moment. He spreads his legs a little more widely and watches Charles’s eyes darken with arousal. It’s good to know he can still affect his would-be mate, even if Charles doesn’t want him to be a _real_ mate. Perhaps this won’t be so bad—the sex, at least. Erik still can’t swallow the magnitude of not being given the honor of a ritual mating, in front of the goddess and Charles’s people, with his generals pledging allegiance to Erik and his children. (He will be sick about that later.)

Charles kisses him some more, crushes Erik to his body. Erik is taller, but Charles is stronger, and Erik goes willingly, wends his arms around Charles’s neck, draws him near as surely as Charles is drawing him near. One of Charles’s hands buries itself in Erik’s short hair, sending glorious sparks of pain through his scalp. The other one drifts downward, skimming over Erik’s hard and leaking cock, before it reaches his hole. Charles draws a finger around the rim, rubbing Erik’s own slick into his skin, before he slips the tip of a finger inside, tender and slow. He works Erik gently, distracting him with kisses as he is breached for the second time today; it doesn’t hurt this time, he’s so aroused, all he can feel is the delicious sensation of something _inside_ of him, and it’s too little, he wants more, he wants more—

Charles works him long past the point he’s loose enough to take another finger, and only then does he slip two fingers inside Erik. He goes slowly, slowly enough to set Erik’s skin on fire, to make him writhe with frustration, to make him cry out, “I’m ready, I’m ready,” in words the King doesn’t understand. As he methodically fucks Erik with his fingers, he presses his heavy body down on Erik’s, ruts slowly against him until Erik is keening and squirming, caught between his fingers and his cock. By the time Charles puts four fingers inside of him Erik is drenched in sweat and moaning breathlessly. He can’t get leverage on the soft bed, settles for banging his fist against the surface of it and screaming, “Please! Please fuck me!”

Charles must get the idea, because he presses a kiss to the side of Erik’s head and then hitches his legs up, one leg slung over the crook of his elbow, one resting on his shoulders until he’s bent almost in half, and, running a hand over his own cock, slots it into Erik’s cunt as though he was made for the King’s prick. He goes as slowly as he did with his fingers, and Erik shouts in fury and tries to sink down onto Charles’s cock, but Charles doesn’t let him, draws out until only the tip of his cock is inside. The noises Erik is making have turned animal, unintelligible; he makes a sound like all the air is being punched out of him as Charles slides slowly back into him, and then out, setting up a steady rhythm that is all the more maddening because of its predictability.

Erik is caught, pinned, can do nothing but writhe on the cock inside of him with his legs bent as they are, with his hands twisting and grasping at the soft silk sheets which slide past his fingers and leave him unable to get purchase. Charles’s pace gradually increases as he loses control, until he’s slamming into Erik, every powerful thrust sliding him up the bed and wringing the most desperate, helpless noises out of him. Erik comes once while the King is fucking into him, with Charles’s hand on his cock, working him with the same methodical attention to Erik’s pleasure as he had while he’d finger-fucked him, and Erik makes a noise that is not quite a scream and not quite a moan as come dribbles from his cock.

He softens a little after that, but not much, and soon he’s fully hard again, the motion of Charles moving inside of him too potent a sensation to resist. But after that, he loses all sense of time. It’s possible the King fucks him for hours, it’s possible that it only lasts another ten minutes, but eventually he can feel the pressure of the knot swelling at the base of the King’s cock. The King grunts, moving his hand over Erik’s sweaty forehead, gently sweeping his curls out of his eyes, and then _thrusts_ inside—

—Erik screams—

Oh gods and goddess, Charles is going to knot him—he’s a virgin, not in heat—this isn’t how it’s supposed to be done— _to make sure you bled,_ Jean had said, and Erik understands with a rush of terror how this gentle man who fucked him so beautifully is going to make him bleed—Charles grinds his knot against Erik’s hole until he opens to it, until he slowly, painfully stretches around it, and Erik can feel it _swelling_ inside of him without the endorphins from the heat to blunt the pain, he sobs helplessly and buries his face in the soft pillows and Charles strokes his face gently but doesn’t pull out, doesn’t give him any reprieve. Erik is thrashing now, trying to struggle away, but Charles gently captures his wrists in one of his hands and leans over him, incongruously sweet given the pain flaring hot and angry in his cunt, and makes soft shushing noises, his eyes sympathetic, pressing sweet, distracting kisses to Erik’s tear-stained cheeks, his forehead, his mouth. The knot locks in place and Erik comes again as he feels the rush of Charles’s seed flood his insides. 

Eventually he stops squirming. The pain transmutes into a dull ache in his backside, which flares whenever the King or Erik shifts position. Erik is exhausted now, and the air is redolent with the scent of alpha— _his_ alpha—and he feels sleep drag at him, barely aware of his own body beyond the burn of his muscles, like a good training session, and the pain where the knot has pried him open. Charles runs his hand through Erik’s hair, still kneeling over him though his right leg—the one he uses the crutch with—is beginning to shake with the strain. Erik nuzzles at the hand, feeling oddly torn between affection and dismay, his hormones having bound him to this man and his conscious mind reeling from being violated by a knot while not in heat. Supposedly this is why the Westchesterians didn’t induce his heat, so he would feel like this. He hopes it is a ritual of their own and not a deliberate attempt to make him feel small and powerless and hurt.

But the King is so gentle, and when the knot goes down, and slick and come and—yes, blood—comes rushing out of him, he settles by Erik’s side with a sigh and draws him near until Erik is lying over his chest, his ear pressed against his heart. It could be worse, Erik thinks as he drifts off. It could be _so_ much worse.  
  
  
  
He wakes in the morning much later than he usually does, going by the way the sun streams through the small window set high on the wall, but it’s still less light than he’s used to in the mornings, so he’s surprised he wakes at all. He struggles to the side of the too-plush bed and peeks his head out of the canopy; the King is gone. There is another tray, of fruit and something bread-like he’s never seen before, sitting on the low table. Erik is sore and it hurts to stand, to walk; he limps over to the table and breaks off a crumb of the bread-thing. It’s surprisingly sweet. He’s not sure he likes it. He deals with the confusing fruit instead. He has to keep his strength up; the King could return at any time and… make use of him.

Whenever he tries to think through what happened last night, confusion swirls thickly in his head. It seems he might be safe from one of Sebastian’s threats, that Charles would take out his frustration with the Genoshans on Erik’s body; Charles had been, except at the end, considerate and gentle, and he had seemed to take no pleasure in causing Erik pain. But Erik is not a consort. Erik is not even a valued and respected concubine. A concubine would have had the honor of his first time with the King being in public, a consort would have received pledges of fealty from the King’s generals. He is neither; he is a slave. A well-treated slave, one allowed food and rest long past his master’s waking, but still a slave.

He eats mechanically, and when he’s done, tries some more of the bread thing. It tastes like dust this time on his tongue.

When he’s done, he explores the room. There are alcoves for the King’s desk, his sitting area, and his wardrobe, in which he finds a neatly folded stack of silk that seems to be for him; he dons it, but the fastenings given him trouble again, and eventually he gives up, content to wander around with his tunic hanging from his shoulders and his trousers half undone. Books are stacked on every surface, including a small table near the bed, along with an oil lamp. Bookcases line the walls, reaching just under the narrow high window; Erik stands under it and soaks up the sunlight, wondering if he’ll ever be allowed outside again, or even out of this chamber.

He is running a finger along the spine of one of the books, appreciating the novel texture of it—Genosha uses scrolls, when there’s something that requires writing as all—when the door opens and a couple of servants bustle inside. One heads for the bed, and strips the sheets. Erik turns away so he doesn’t have to see the stains on the silk. One heads straight for Erik and begins to fuss over him, doing up his clothes properly, going into the attached bath and coming out with a comb to torture Erik’s curls into submission. One clears up the detritus of his breakfast and rushes out; one pulls out a pair of gilded sandals, deeply impractical but beautiful, and laces them up Erik’s feet. A new pair of guards are waiting at the door along with the ones that seem to guard the King’s bedchamber at all times, a strong-looking blond and a wiry-looking dark fellow, armed with swords, not halberds.

When he’s deemed presentable, he’s ushered over to the guards. He looks at them mutely, and one of the guards seems to take pity on him. He points to himself, says, slowly and clearly, “Armando.” Then he points at his companion. “Alex.”

Names, Erik thinks. “Erik,” he says.

Armando smiles. He beckons to Erik, who follows after him, too tired to even wonder what’s going on. They take pathways that Erik realizes ought to have been familiar but weren’t when they emerge into the same feasting hall as the night before. Except this time there are many, many more people. Erik freezes at the crush of people, crowded to either side of an aisle down which Charles and a man in official-looking robes waits, and it’s only a gentle push from Alex that gets him moving again, now free of his guards. Is he meant to go to Charles? He limps down the path, feeling whispers rise around him. He flushes. It is clear for anyone to see which end Charles came in last night. The walk seems interminable, and he keeps feeling like he’s about to slip in his gilded sandals.

At last he rushes the last few steps to Charles, who takes his hand and gently draws him in, running a soothing hand over through Erik’s hair. The man in robes begins to speak, long droning passages of Westchesterian that the King punctuates with shorter statements. Erik wonders if he’s being introduced to the court, if he won’t be taken in front of them properly. Charles holds him close, tucks Erik’s face into his shoulder, and Erik feels glad that he won’t have to meet the blank, hostile gazes of the Westchesterians crowded around him, surrounding him more surely than any enemy in the past, that he can bury himself in Charles’s scent and ignore whatever’s going on. 

Whatever it is goes on for long enough that Erik begins to drowse, cocooned in his mate’s scent as he is, lulled by his fingers in his hair. Then the attendant from this morning steps up and begins to spread out a familiar bundle of silk—the sheets.

He unrolls them with a flourish, until everyone can see the pink stains where blood mixed with come and the sticky remnants of Erik’s climaxes, and people begin to—to _clap_ , and beside him Charles smiles a little ruefully and Erik doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand why his pain and vulnerability is an object of delight for these people, and he is shaking and hot tears prickle in his eyes but no one seems to notice. He blinks them down—he is stronger than that—and when Charles tugs him down he kneels, and when the man in robes wraps a silk rope around his and Charles’s held hands he accepts it, and when Charles pulls him up to stand and kiss him he takes it. All the while the sheets colored with Erik’s shame mock him, disdain him, out of the corner of his eye, remind him of his standing.  
  
  
  
When Charles knots him again that night, he doesn’t bleed, which is something.  
  
  
  
The days pass and Erik grows less frightened, but more dully, implacably _bored_. He’s not confined to the King’s room, which is possibly the only thing that could make the castle more claustrophobic, but his attempts to go outside are gently redirected by the guards. Jean rides out for a diplomatic mission to the Isle of the Sky soon after Erik’s mating, and there goes the last person who understands him. Everything is different, the clothes, the food, the bed, the weather, but it’s only a novelty for a moment before it all compounds on itself and makes him sick with longing for home.

It rains often, and he sits under the small window in the King’s chambers and listens to it plink down on the stone outside. He wears his flimsy clothing, learns to do up the fastenings, but never stops feeling vulnerable in them. Shaw stripped him naked and these Westchesterian clothes are hardly any better, and it’s _cold_ , and he misses his furs and his armor and his freedom, which he wore like the alpha general’s cloak he’s shoved under the piles of clothes he’s somehow amassed in a chest in the King’s closet.

The suppression collar is kept on. When he’d motioned to it, Charles had just shaken his head ruefully, and Erik hadn’t asked again; it was too painful to be denied. Perhaps it’s a taboo here. He’d been expecting Charles to use his telepathy freely, and he doesn’t even seem to care whether Erik understands him at all.

Genoshans are nomadic; he’s used to riding vast distances, and even as an omega prince he had learned to fight, to defend their land and their people. And now he’s. Trapped. In a confusing, large castle. With no senior officials who pledged allegiance to him for him to spend time with. With a mate who isn’t his husband, who is busy with the work of ruling during the day and fucking him during the night, and whose language he can still barely understand. He regrets, now, having always been out playing and riding in his childhood, instead of studying diplomacy at his father’s knee like his alpha siblings had. He was not quite the youngest—hadn’t been the youngest until Shaw had killed them all but the lone omega—but close, and he had thought he’d have time to learn the things an omega mate of a chieftain would have to learn. He’d thought his parents would be there to help him. 

One evening he investigates the long low tub in the bath, and watching him, Armando calls for servants, who bring up steaming buckets of water. Through a series of gestures, Erik slowly gets the idea that he’s meant to _bathe_ in the tub, in the warm—water!—water, and Armando and Alex retreat to the hall with the other guards as he sheds his clothes and sinks into the water, which is thankfully not quite as hot as cooking water. The tub is too shallow for him to bathe as he normally would; instead he lies down in the water and wonders if any of the glass bottles perched on the edge of the tub are soap.

That’s how the King finds him when he enters his chambers, drifting silently in the bath, his ears underwater, listening to the sound of his own pulse and water lapping at the walls of the tub. Charles gently pushes him to make room, then climbs in behind him, and shows Erik which bottle a strange liquidy fragrant soap is in. He lathers Erik’s hair until Erik moans with pleasure, then guides him down into the water so that he can rinse it off. He kisses Erik until he’s writhing on Charles’s lap, grips his hips and lifts him up and onto Charles’s hard cock, lowers him down onto it until Erik cries out, his arms twined around Charles’s neck, feeling the thickness and hardness of him inside his cunt. Charles bounces him up and down on his cock, Erik’s legs splayed wide around Charles’s body, the water sloshing rhythmically with every thrust, and Erik closes his eyes and the cooling water is a river he’s bathing in back home and the impassive walls around him are his people watching as Charles fucks him, claims him, proves he’s not ashamed of him. 

Instead of knotting inside him, he pulls out slightly before he comes, and Erik gasps as he feels the come gushing out of him, not held in place by the knot. It’s a sticky, messy feeling, no matter that he just cleaned up, and it makes him feel vaguely dirty and used, like a whore Charles sought his release in instead of a mate hoping to get pregnant and bear his husband an heir. But Charles gently takes a washcloth and cleans his hole save for a few slow drips of come still leaking out of him, and helps Erik out of the tub on shaking legs, and curls around him in the bed as though Erik is precious, as though Erik is important.

Nights are the only time of day when Erik is sure of his place in this strange new world: in Charles’s arms.  
  
  
  
Erik suspects that Charles doesn’t like how loud he is. When he moans when Charles sinks into him, Charles tries to cover his mouth with his hand. Charles glances furtively behind him, to the door, outside of which the guards are stationed, and Erik gets the sense that Charles is ashamed of him, beyond just taking him in private, or at least embarrassed to be overheard. Are omegas not supposed to enjoy sex here?

One night, before Charles pulls him into bed, he gently pries Erik’s mouth open and stuffs it with a soft cloth, then ties another strip around his mouth so he can’t spit it out. Gagged, Erik can’t suck Charles off, but Charles seems to relax now that Erik’s noises are muffled, fucking him slowly and leisurely until tears are streaming down Erik’s cheeks and a fire is roaring low in his belly. Charles takes him on his back again, no longer on his knees with his ass sticking up in the air and his face buried in the pillows with Charles’s hand on the back of his head, trying to muffle the sounds he was making, and Erik likes this better, even if the gag rankles. 

Charles ruts into him with the driving force of a man possessed, and Erik feels like he’s shaking apart in his arms, like his skin is too small for his body, like he’ll die if Charles stops fucking him, if he isn’t impaled on cock and knot soon. He doesn’t think about the servants who will strip the bed tomorrow as he trembles on Charles’s cock and stains the sheets with his leaking, drooling slick; he’s learned not to care when they do, as they’re always professional in spite of the come and slick splattered everywhere. He doesn’t think about Charles’s affections, inconstant as the weather, the way he treats Erik with infinite gentleness at one moment and yet reminds him of his place in the next. He is focused to the points of contact between him and Charles; Charles’s bruising grip on his hip, Charles’s writing-callused fingers stripping his cock, Charles’s shaft plunging in and out of him as the night moves on, silky in its passage. 

After his knot goes down, Charles dips two fingers into Erik’s loose, fucked-out hole, and paints him with his come, rubbing the heady, unmistakable scent of satisfied alpha into Erik’s skin, marking him in a different way from the necklace of lovebites around his throat. Erik can’t sleep until Charles removes the gag, as gently as he’d put it in place, but after that he drifts off almost immediately to the sensation of Charles tracing circles onto his back, and wakes to the sunlight of a day in progress, Charles gone, and seed dried on his thighs and back and chest. He takes a bath after that.  
  
  
  
Maybe from the way Erik wanders the castle like a ghost, attempting to learn the layout and only getting lost, or maybe from the way he pounces on Charles whenever he enters his chambers after a long day, practically climbing him in his frustration to having _something_ to do, some purpose, anything, Charles divines that he’s wilting like a flower cut from the vine in boredom. Charles does his best to entertain him. He gets the servants to drag Erik out of his chambers for meals, where he sits by Charles’s side and, at dinner, watches entertainments that don’t require speech to enjoy: a fire-swallower, an illusionist, a singing troupe.

Charles tries to enlist one servant to teach Erik how to use a needle and thread to work intricate patterns onto cloth of the kind that decorate Charles’s clothes and his own; Erik stares at the servant until he fidgets. Erik doesn’t see the purpose of “embroidery”; he can sew, which is different, but when he tears a sleeve of his green fine silk tunic, the one that Charles had gifted him, the servants are immediately whisking it away before he can get his hands on needle and thread. It appears in his chest of clothes the day after, good as new. 

After a while, Charles himself tries to teach Erik the game he keeps in his study, white and black pieces on a checkered board. The rules are easy enough to explain without words, but Erik struggles with strategy; Charles is a seasoned player, and Erik loses fast and frequently. When Erik points at the board, Charles’s eyes light up, but honestly, more often that not a game ends with Erik on his knees, attempting to distract Charles from demanding another one. He doesn’t want to play chess. He wants to spar. He wants to ride. He wants to go outside and breathe fresh, unrecycled air. 

Charles does make an effort to try to teach him the language, which is the only pastime to which Erik really applies himself. In bed, after they’ve coupled, Charles, his voice low and soothing, points to various parts of the room and tells Erik the word for them in Westchesterian, which Erik repeats. It’s slow going, and without someone like Jean who is fluent in both languages, frustrating more often than not. But over the months, he learns to ask simple questions. His vocabulary increases. He still can’t hold a conversation with Charles, but he can ask him to pass the bowl of grapes, and Charles’s beaming smile when he does so warms him from the inside.  
  
  
  
He doesn’t notice at first—being given to Westchester has thrown off his sense of time—but two or perhaps three months in, he misses a heat. And then he starts to get sick.

It’s when he wrenches himself away from Charles’s early-morning amorous touches to kneel over the chamber pot and empty the contents of his stomach that he has to admit something is wrong. Charles, slowly, because of his leg, kneels beside him and rubs at his back, but his expression is ecstatic. Perhaps Charles is wrong. Perhaps it is just a stomach flu.

Perhaps it isn’t.  
  
  
  
The castle physician, Hank, says a word in Westcheterian. Erik isn’t familiar with this one, but the way Charles closes his eyes, rapturous, and presses a kiss to Erik’s temple tells him what it means. He protectively circles his flat stomach with his hand, feeling a little sick, and not just because of the nausea. What, had he thought that Charles was slipping contraceptives into his drink? He hadn’t imagined children, which was an oversight—it was what he’d been brought here to do, wasn’t it, to pleasure Charles and to bear him children—but when the mating ceremony failed to materialize, he’d… stopped thinking about it. It was too much to handle, thinking about bringing babies into the viperous world of the court without the protection of legitimacy, of marriage, of a true mating. Will his children be princes and princesses? Slaves like him?

In Genosha, this would be simple. In Genosha, he would have been honored, with the pillars of the tribe, in mating him, pledging themselves to his protection and his children’s protection. In Westchester, he exists in a liminal space, not quite concubine, not quite whore, suspended between Charles’s warmth and the bitter cold of being nothing. He doesn’t have the words to explain any of this, so instead he asks Hank another question that’s been pressing on his mind: “How many?”

Hank blinks, surprised to hear him speak, perhaps, as he’s been directing all his comments toward Charles. He turns to Erik, flustered, and says a word Erik doesn’t recognized, followed by a word he does: one.

One child. Only one. The King’s sole natural child will be a target for opportunists in the court, whether prince or slave, will be seen as an obstacle to key political players; and the child will be lonely. Erik thinks of his own childhood, romping and playing with his alpha and beta siblings, the sole omega, for all the good that did him—his whole family dead now, at Shaw’s hand. And besides his concern for their welfare, he feels the shame of it burning in his face. If he had been mated properly, he might be having up to six in his first litter. Instead, he will carry his shame externally, with his sole child’s hand in his, a walking advertisement that Charles had only wanted him for his own pleasure, and not as a partner, not as a companion. Beside him, Charles makes a concerned noise, and tips up Erik’s chin so he can inspect him; Erik’s worry and despair must be obvious. Erik turns his face away. He’s not sure he could explain it, even if he had the words.  
  
  
  
Erik begins to wander the castle with a desperation he barely understands himself. Armando and Alex, following along, exchanged puzzled looks as he seems to search for something; Erik can’t explain that he is aching for something to do, some way to prove himself useful to the King and his court. He roams the hallways like a ghost, ignoring the glances the servants and courtiers give him, imagining his future child as lost and lonely as he is now. One morning, he slips from Charles’s bed—the baby has thrown his sleep schedule off, and he rises erratically, sometimes napping late into the afternoon, sometimes waking even before Charles—picks at the tray of pastries left out for him if he gets hungry, and slips outside. He’s lucky; Armando and Alex haven’t arrived yet, one guard on Charles’s chamber door is napping and one is late. He drifts through the door and into the hallways, feeling as though he can _breathe_ for the first time in the gloomy confines of the castle.

The hallways are quieter this early in the morning, before breakfast must be ferried to all the nobles in residence. Erik runs one hand over the cool stone walls, wondering if he will be able to make it back by himself or will need to find someone to guide him again, the other hand resting on his belly, trying to map out any trace of a bump, though he knows that if he’s only having one babe it’s much too early to feel anything. He keeps to the outer walls, letting dawn from the high windows settle across his skin. The castle is damp and dark and imposing, but better in the mornings, when sunlight streams down from the east windows and reminds him, distantly, that there is a world outside these walls, a world he might one day see again.

He moves past the kitchens, beginning to work themselves into a frenzy, past the servants’ quarters and guards’ quarters. Up a flight of stairs, to the communal rooms. The King’s audience chamber is this way, and he thinks he might explore what lies beyond it in the north wing. He’s just passing the training rooms when he hears soft grunts and the smack of fist on flesh and pauses, looks inside.

It’s Armando and Alex, sparring. Erik watches, transfixed, at the first sign he’s seen of anything resembling Genosha in Westchester; he used to spar with the warriors, before Shaw. Alex is using a knife; Armando is bare-chested, but his skin has thickened and turned to something like rock, and he catches the blows easily. Still, he is clumsier in this form, and Alex darts out of the way as Armando attempts to disarm him. Alex makes a fairly common footwork mistake, his foot a little too turned out to the side, making him a bigger target, and Armando strikes him, gently given his bulk, but enough to knock Alex’s knife out of the way.

Erik claps. Armando and Alex spin around, startled, then relax when they see it’s only him. Alex says something—Erik catches the word _early_ , but nothing else—and Erik shrugs. An idea comes to him, slowly, creeping over his thoughts like the beginnings of dawn. He adopts a fighting stance, beckons to Alex. Alex exchanges a glance with Armando, tries to shake his head, but Erik stands his ground, determined. His heart is racing in his chest. This is the first time he’s been able to do anything that remotely resembles his old life, and he won’t throw it away. He won’t.

Armando and Alex discuss it in low, unintelligible tones, and at last Alex takes up a ready stance across from Erik. When Armando claps to start the bout, he moves slowly, telegraphing his movements. Erik rolls his eyes.

In a flash, Alex is on the ground, Erik twisting his arm behind his back, a knee in the small of his back preventing him from standing. Armando is gaping. Alex turns to look at him, stunned.

Erik lets him up and dances backward, watches him stand and dust himself off. They take up positions again; this time, Alex is watching him warily. They circle each other, waiting for the other person to make a move. Erik’s blood is high; he hasn’t felt this exhilarated since Shaw had told him that he would be mated off to the King of Westchester, and that was a sickening exhilaration, that was nausea roiling in the pit of his stomach and resignation settling heavily on his bones. Alex rushes at him, throws a punch, and Erik catches it neatly and uses Alex’s brief moment of unbalance to trip him. Alex sprawls to the ground. At least he knows how to catch himself when he falls. That’s the first thing Genoshan warriors learn, and Erik has not been impressed with Westchester’s training thus far; perhaps it’s no wonder than the Genoshan raids hit them so hard.

Alex gets up and lunges; Erik dances out of the way before he can catch a hit in his stomach. Normally he wouldn’t mind, but he’s pregnant now. He’s never done it himself, but he’s paid attention to the way pregnant omegas fight, the way others around them modify their blows so as to avoid harming the children, and knows how to be careful. Alex holds his fists up, waiting for Erik to make a move; Erik studies him, sees that he favors his right. But Alex is right-handed, and Erik suspects that’s a bluff. He goes in from the left instead, delivering an elbow to Alex’s ribs, and Alex grunts and reaches for him, but Erik spins out of range—he’s laughing, feeling the sheer joy of movement, he’s rusty but well enough to defeat Alex, and this is his favorite moment since he came to Westchester, this is the first time he’s felt like himself in a long, long time.

Behind him, someone snarls; the sound of an alpha about to rip someone’s throat out. Erik turns, startled, and sees the King.

His expression is alight with fierce, terrible anger, twisting his features, making him almost unrecognizable, and Erik stumbles back, suddenly frightened. The King strides forward—he’s not using his crutch, but in spite of that he’s hardly limping—and seals a steel hand on Erik’s upper arm, yanking him backwards and behind him. He’s shouting now, snarling at Armando and Alex; Alex has gone pale, he’s shaking his head furiously, mutely—the King seizes the collar of Alex’s tunic and shakes him, and Erik cries out, not sure what’s happening but aware of the danger sparking off Charles’s gestures. Charles turns to him, and his expression melts from fury into fear. What does he have to be frightened about, Erik thinks dazedly. Alex and Armando are the ones who look like they’re about to be killed. And Erik—Erik is the one whose whole life, whose child’s life, is dependent on Charles’s sufferance.

Charles drags him backward, Erik stumbling over his own feet in a display of clumsiness unheard of since he was a child. He is still barking orders at Alex and Armando, who bow, Alex still pale with dread. Charles marches Erik down the corridor, making servants turn and goggle, until they reach a room that Erik recognizes—the infirmary—and Charles, in a surprising display of gentleness, maneuvers Erik to sit on one of the cots. Erik tries to shake his head, tries to tell him that he knew what he was doing, that he would never endanger the baby, but of course Charles doesn’t understand, his expression only growing more and more thunderous as Erik presses a comforting hand to the place the baby will grow to fill.

Charles snaps something out, snatches Erik’s hand away from his belly. His grip is sure but not bruising, even at the height of his anger. He speaks severely to Erik, growing angrier every time Erik tries to shake his head, tell him that no, he was fine, he would have been fine, and at last Hank comes out, listens to Charles’s clipped explanation, pales, and begins to check Erik over.

Erik lies back and thinks of Genosha.  
  
  
  
When Charles had stirred that morning and seen that Erik was missing, he’d chastised himself for the pang of panic that had gone through him. Erik had slept erratically ever since he’d found out about the pregnancy. When he sat up and saw that Erik was nowhere to be seen, though, fear had flooded him like a dam had burst somewhere inside of him.

He’d chastised the guards for their lax protection of his chambers, and gone out looking for Erik, in such a hurry that he’d forgotten his crutch until he was already halfway down the hall. He didn’t _truly_ think that an assassin or kidnapper had gotten past his guards, but Erik was pregnant, and Erik didn’t know the castle very well, and he might have been lost, he was walking around without guards and there were people who would have liked Charles to marry their omega daughters or sons, there were people who, even if the pregnancy was being kept a secret out of deference to Westchesterian tradition, would have been all too happy to be rid of Charles’s mate. There was Cain. There were alphas. Charles thought of the scandal should Erik be discovered alone with an alpha and picked up his pace, though it made pain shoot through his leg, as happened whenever he overexerted himself. Erik was—

Erik was _his._ His to touch, yes, and Erik was certainly beautiful—that had been, to his shame, the first thing he’d registered when Shaw had dragged a naked omega into the feasting hall, that he was _beautiful_ , with his cool light eyes and narrow frame and straight back and the faint suggestion of auburn curls and proud expression that had never faltered even as the court had stared and whispered—but also his to protect. And Erik was so sorely in need of protection. He was so vulnerable here, barely knowing the language, and the circumstances under which he’d arrived—stripped naked, scarred from… _whatever_ had happened to him in the past, perhaps the coup in which he’d lost his entire family and Shaw had gained power, expecting to be publicly raped… He had no friends here, now that Charles had had to send the only one who spoke his language to urgent negotiations to avert war with the Isle of the Sky. The people Charles would have trusted to protect him, regardless of whether they could communicate with him, were, besides being alphas with whom it would have been improper to leave Erik alone, were awkward around him, knowing that Erik had expected them to rape him. 

And the court, that pit of vipers, was looking to swallow him whole. Charles had known the moment Shaw had brought Erik in that respect from the court for his new mate would be hard-won. (Even more so than Charles’s barbarian bride would have always struggled, among the terrible rumors about Genoshan sexual practices, how any member of the court would look at him and think of the whispers that Genoshan rulers gang-raped their mates while the entire nation watched and let anyone who wanted join in.) Shaw had undermined Erik’s future authority; how could the court ever be expected to take him seriously, now that they’d seen him naked and collared like a slave? How could Charles ever leave him in charge of the castle and its environs when he went to battle, in the unfortunate event that war did break out between Westchester and the Isle of the Sky? And what must Erik have thought of him, being presented to him like that? How afraid must he have been, though he was strong, though he hid his fear like a warrior, like a hero?

Charles had tried his best to make Erik feel comfortable around him, though his infirmity meant that he’d had no choice but to prove his vigor to the courts that first night and most nights since then, though he knew that the moments whispers of _impotence_ or _infertility_ reached the servants’ ears, and through them, his court, his own authority would crumble. But he’d been gentle as he could with Erik, and Erik seemed to like it, anyway, the sex, the way he bedded up next to Charles as if trying to leach his heat. But at any moment, Erik could slip out of range of Charles’s protective abilities, and be faced with a court that was waiting for him to fail, or a danger that he, as naive and unschooled an omega as he was, wouldn’t even know to avoid. Charles thought of all the terrors waiting for him around every corner and picked up his pace.

It was so much worse than he’d imagined, though.

Watching Alex lunge at Erik in the training room, Erik laughing as he spun out of range—it send cold terror through his heart. What was he _doing_? He was _pregnant,_ he needed to be _resting_ to protect the baby, and he was an omega besides, delicate and fragile and unsuited to combat, and now Erik was dodging a punch, throwing himself about with his guards. Erik had been upset when he’d learned about the pregnancy. Did he—did he not want the child?

Was that what this was? Not wanting the child?

So Charles shouts at Alex and Armando and reassigns them from Erik’s household guard, so he snarls at Erik, who flinches back, afraid, utterly confused, as though he has no concept of doing anything _wrong_ —he hovers when Hank checks his mate over, is tense until Hank pronounces the baby perfectly healthy, no sign of miscarriage or early labor at all. And he looks at Erik, who finally seems to have some understanding that what he had done _had not been right_ , and tells him, though he know that Erik will only understand a couple of words, if that, “Don’t—don’t do that again.”

It’s the first time he should execute Erik for treason, but not the last.  
  
  
  
Paradoxically, the more Charles and his guards force him to rest, the more tired Erik becomes.

Eventually he’d understood Charles’s panic, but no matter how much he’d tried to reassure him, he couldn’t get across that it was perfectly safe, that he knew what he was doing and how to protect the baby. And Charles had been quiet and moody ever since then. He’d given Erik new guards—Erik had asked, “Armando? Alex?” but Charles had just shaken his head vehemently, and looked so stormy that Erik had tamped down his stubbornness in deference to his mate’s rare show of temper. Perhaps because it’s the first time he has seen Charles truly angry since Shaw had presented him to Charles, his anger is all the more terrible. Erik is constantly aware that though Charles seems to like him, he hasn’t granted him any status—but perhaps he will, if Erik pleases him well enough—and though it pains him, he privately vows not to disappoint him so again.

It just hadn’t _occurred_ to him that it might be inappropriate for him to defend himself. And Westchester is _baffling._ His new guards, whose names he doesn’t bother to learn, corral him back to the King’s bedchambers after meals or particularly long walks around the castle, where they insist he lie down and—Erik learns the word “rest” pretty quickly, and soon after that never wants to hear it again. He lies in bed, bored and listless, reminding himself over and over again that he needs to please Charles if his child has a hope of becoming legitimate. But it is hard not to feel permanently insulted by this insistence that he’s too fragile and precious to walk around the castle when his body begins to change even before his belly swells with child, losing some of its hard muscle and softening around the edges. He’s weakening—could he even defend himself and his child from a rogue assassin now? He’s used to hours of fighting, maintaining his strength, every day, and now he feels helpless. He feels _wrong._

He’s not allowed to be alone, and his guards get twitchy whenever it’s just him and an alpha—he’d tried to approach the man he now knows as Logan, to thank him for the cloak, and Logan had taken one look at him, sniffed the air, and scuttled away as though Erik were trying to light him on fire. But he’d grown up around alphas, sparring with them and fighting with them; they were just trusted, and here in Westchester it feels that _everything_ is about sex, about the ways he could betray his mate. He’d been close to his mother and always, in the vague way that children dreams about such things, wanted an omega son or daughter. Now he hopes for an alpha, so they’ll be spared Westchester’s insane methods and taboos.

The food is different and he finds himself nearly in tears when he has a craving for Genoshan winterberries; Charles asks what’s wrong, but Erik shakes his head, unable to articulate it through his bastard language of mime and Westchesterian. Charles tries—he has a selection of berries brought in—but none of them are _right_ and it it’s not just the food, the beds are different and _wrong_ and he keeps waking up sore from the softness of them. The _time_ is different, it moves slow and thick like swimming in deep water _._ Everything is just wrong.  
  
  
  
When Charles enters, Erik is already on his back in the bed, his legs spread, two fingers inside of himself, moaning wantonly as he begins to slick up. Charles makes a harsh, flustered noise, and the doors bang behind him in the guards’ haste to close them. Charles strides to the bed, tosses his crutch aside, and climbs on top of Erik, his hand already unfastening his trousers. He doesn’t bother reaching for the gag that they now keep on top of the nightstand, just pulls himself out, hard and huge and leaking already, and shoves inside.

Erik keens, _yes, yes_ , as Charles fucks into him, driving a punishing pace from the very beginning, he wraps his legs around Charles’s waist to pull him closer, lies bracketed between Charles’s straining arms. Erik reaches for his own cock but Charles catches his wrist and traps it above his head, and just forces Erik to _take it,_ to narrow solely to the point of Charles’s pleasure, and Erik bucks and writhes and moans, but Charles is implacable, Charles’s thrusts are inexorable. Charles doesn’t knot inside him. Instead, he pulls out right before, ignoring Erik’s scream of fury, strokes his cock with his free hand and spurts his seed all over Erik’s thighs, his ass, paints his twitching, aching hole with come. He lets go of Erik’s wrist, but before he can reach down to stroke himself, Charles is already there, his mouth sealed over Erik’s cock, and Erik screams again, a shocked scream of pleasure, and comes in Charles’s mouth. Charles doesn’t swallow, the way Erik does; he lets Erik’s thin handful of come dribble out of his open mouth, adding to the mess smeared all over Erik’s body.

Erik, gasping, stares up at the canopied ceiling of the bed, barely noticing as Charles collapses over him, his limbs trapped under Charles’s heavy weight. Charles has been staying away, attending to his Kingly duties until late at night, when Erik is sometimes already asleep, and rising even earlier. Charles has been sending meals up for him so that he doesn’t have to join him at mealtimes, and Erik gets the impression that he is trying to give Erik… _space,_ though for what, he doesn’t understand. So he tries to bring Charles back to him in the only way he knows Charles will understand: spreading his legs, presenting his ass, screaming Charles’s name as he fucks into him.

Charles runs fingers through Erik’s sweat-damp curls now and Erik thinks he’s pleased, and he is glad because he wants to please Charles. His people are relying on him; his _child_ is relying on him. He may not be sure of his role in Charles’s life, but he’s certain of his role in Charles’s bed. _See?_ he wants to say. _I can be good for you._

Charles’s hand drifts down and settles over Erik’s belly; there isn’t a bump yet, but just the suggestion of it under his skin. He says something in Westchesterian, something he calls Erik when he doesn’t call him by his name, and nuzzles against Erik, throwing a heavy arm over his body and tucking him in close to his side. Erik lets his eyes drift closed and wonders: Is this enough? Am I enough?  
  
  
  
Charles catches him one day singing to that place under his skin where his child is growing. It's an old Genoshan lullaby, the one his mother sang to him and his siblings when they were children, a song he still knows by heart. _Rest, my child / The day is over / The sun will shine / When the morning comes…_

He doesn’t notice Charles until he turns and spies him in the doorway. Charles is smiling, a handsome, crooked, almost helpless grin, and when Erik cuts himself off, startled, Charles gestures for him to go on, then drifts over to just behind Erik and wraps an arm around his waist, rubbing at his still-flat belly. Erik sings, and Charles rests his forehead against the nape of Erik’s neck, and after that Charles stops giving him distance. After that Charles returns to his bed.

It’s not the sex that convinces him in the end, but the song.  
  
  
  
It’s not like Shaw had _told_ him, exactly, and even if he had, Erik knows that the man lies, it’s his bread and butter. But the word he’d used— _honored mate_ —when he’d told Erik what he was going to be to Charles… Erik had been naive enough to believe it. Shaw had told him he’d be Charles’s concubine, and it wasn’t until Erik was on his knees in the King’s bedchambers, being fucked without any pretense of a mating ceremony at all, that he’d realized he was Charles’s whore. Shaw might as well have sold him to a brothel, instead of a court. 

He’s been thinking about this more, lately, since a very faint curve, not visible through his clothes, has appeared to his body. He can handle it. He can live with how he has fallen in the world. But the child… With no public claim, the King can clearly just dispose of him whenever he wants, and then what will happen to the baby? And he’s heard, in Genosha, how children from wealthy families in Westchester are taken from their mothers and sent away for months at a time, put in the care of “nannies.” And he’d hoped to be spared that if his children were royalty, but they’re illegitimate he’ll lose them… It doesn’t _matter_ if he’s not Charles’s true mate, if he will never be Charles’s true mate, though it makes him ache, because Charles is kind and clever and his smiles are wry and he’s gloriously handsome, if Erik had been able to choose his mate he would have wanted someone exactly like Charles, except maybe someone who cared whether he was understood by his omega, but… his child. His children, if Charles sires more by him. If he can just legitimize his _children_ —  
  
  
  
He’s slipped away from his guards, leaving them arguing with the kitchens over whether he can have extra sweetmeats, when he runs into him. The King’s brother.

Before she’d left, Jean had told him to avoid Prince Cain, if at all possible, and Erik hadn’t needed telling twice. The Prince must be livid; his brother taking a mate might mean he never ascends the throne, depending, once again, on the legitimacy of his children. Cain, Erik knows, would be his staunchest enemy in the court. It takes him a moment to recognize him when he rounds the corner and nearly walks into a broad chest, crammed into the ruffled tunics Westchester prefers. Erik is about to apologize and move on when the man catches him by the wrist and he glances up, into the cold coal-dark eyes of the Prince himself.

The Prince says something in Westchesterian, and Erik doesn’t have to know the words to understand that sneering tone. It’s the same tone Shaw had taken when he’d stripped off Erik’s clothes himself before forcing him into the carriage that would take him to Westchester. Cain is looking at him like he’s not even an obstacle, just an object, something for him to put his feet on, and Erik grits his teeth and is only thankful that Charles seems to have escaped Westchester’s bizarre tendency to view omegas only as docile dolls to be played with and bred and left discarded on the bed. Erik tries to twist out of his grip, but Cain tightens it, draws him closer. He says something else, mocking and slow, probably about Erik’s inability to understand. Erik clenches his teeth.

He would punch him, but… but Charles. Charles had been so angry when he’d found Erik sparring with Alex; what would he think if he learned that his mate punched his brother? He is supposed to be ingratiating himself to the people who have Charles’s ear, not antagonizing them. And a swallowing pit is opening in his stomach besides, as Cain jeers and shoves him backward, hard enough to hit the wall, hard enough for Erik to wince. Cain looms over him, palms his cock through his trousers, and Erik flinches back.

Whenever he thinks that Charles might value him as more than just a bedwarmer and a womb, something happens to remind him of his place. No one would _dream_ of speaking like this to the chieftain’s omega in Genosha, honored as they are, blessed as they are, but he’s not _in_ Genosha, he’s in Westchester, and he’s nothing here, less than nothing, just an object to be leered at and groped. Erik cries out when Cain reaches for him, and Cain laughs, glancing around—his message is clear—no one to hear you, and no one that would care besides—and withdraws. He saunters away, tossing another phrase in Westchesterian over his shoulder. Erik can’t parse it, but it has the distinct flavor of _See you later._

Erik shivers there, in the alcove where he’d bumped into Cain, his mind racing. Is he to be given to someone else when Charles is done with him, when Charles has the baby he wants? Is he to be given to _Cain,_ is that the reason for his confident, possessive touches, like he knows that Charles won’t chastise him for sampling what is soon to be his? Erik shudders at the thought of being mounted by Cain, a thought almost as repulsive as being taken by Shaw. Before he even realizes that his knees have weakened, he finds himself sliding down the wall; he curls up, brings his knees to his chest, thinks dazedly about how soon enough he won’t be able to hide his stomach like this any longer. His wrists throb. They’re already bruising. 

That evening, he flinches when Charles takes him by the wrist to lead him to bed, and Charles notices, his expression of concern melting to livid fury when he rolls up the sleeve of Erik’s tunic to find finger-shaped bruises. “Who?!” he demands, and Erik shakes his head furiously—he hasn’t been sparring, he hasn’t let anyone fuck him without Charles’s permission—he knows what it looks like, but he’s _trying_ to be good, he _is._ Charles continues to demand, “Who? _Who?_ ” until Erik is shaking, hormones high, almost in frustrated tears; _why_ won’t he just use his telepathy, why isn’t _Erik_ a telepath, why can he not just figure out what Charles _wants_ from him?

“No,” he tries to tell Charles. “No,” it was no one, it was his fault. Would Charles even believe him that Cain is the one who hurt him? Erik doesn’t think he could stand watching Charles’s protective fury melt into disinterest, so he doesn’t let himself think about it, just shakes his head, deny, deny. Eventually, Charles picks up his crutch and storms out of the room, leaving Erik to curl on his side in the bed and wait fretfully for his return.

He doesn’t come back.  
  
  
  
As the days pass, the anxious gnawing in the pit of his stomach grows more and more ravenous. He sees Cain everywhere now, smirking at him in the hallways, making lewd gestures out of the corners of his eyes, even when he’s not there. The life inside of him has never felt so precariously positioned, like at any moment both he and it could tip over into the abyss of Charles’s disfavor. Charles comes back to bed after two days, still glowering whenever he sees the bruises marked onto Erik’s wrists, fading now to an ugly dull purple, but apparently resigned to the idea that Erik will deny anything happened at all. But he is cold again, fucking Erik with a perfunctory disinterest that makes him lay still, staring at the ceiling, late into the night, until long after Charles’s breathing has steadied into a solid rhythm.

He has to do something. He has to do _something._  
  
  
  
Eventually, he has an idea.  
  
  
  
Without thinking too hard about what he’s doing, he slips his guards and wanders. He knows now the names of the people he’s looking for—Logan, Scott, Ororo, Raven—remembers what they look like. It’s likely only a couple of them will be found in the castle at any given time; like Jean, they’re constantly being sent out on one task or another for the King, more so now that war with the Isle of the Sky seems possible. He thinks Raven is around—he saw her at supper last night—and so is Scott.

He finds Scott first.

Scott is looking over some kind of record in a small, dusty room filled to the hilt with books and scrolls. Erik pads into the room and closes the door behind him; Scott starts, then jumps again when he turns and sees that it’s Erik. It’s the first time he’s been alone with an alpha, other than Charles, since he came to Westchester. Erik takes a steadying breath.

Scott makes a questioning noise in the back of his throat, asks something Erik doesn’t understand. Erik draws close, watching as Scott’s brows furrow, watching carefully for any sign of interest or understanding. He drops to his knees.

He’s desperate. He’s _so_ desperate. If this doesn’t work, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. It’s not a real claiming ceremony, not one in front of Charles’s people, but surely it’s better than nothing. If he can just secure the generals’ loyalty to him and his unborn child, even in private, he might be able to sleep again, in knowing that the _child_ will be protected, even if he himself is discarded or given to Cain. He nuzzles at Scott’s clothed cock, breathes hot breath on it the way that Charles likes, reaches for the lacings—

—and Scott shoves him so hard he nearly cracks his head on the wall behind him. Erik, his heart sinking, looks up; Scott’s expression is hard to parse behind the glasses, but his face is twisted in—disbelief and horror—and Erik wants to cry. He won’t even _entertain_ the idea of giving Erik a private audience? He’s so horrified at the King’s whore stepping above his station and begging for fealty from a general that he won’t even agree to getting his cock sucked? Scott is babbling, his voice raised in pure upset, and Erik shuffles backward, frightened at the way that he looks like he’s about to—to strike him at any moment. Scott seems to register this, and he steps backward, puts the table between himself and Erik. They stare at each other for a long moment.

Finally, Scott clears his throat and calls out. In a moment, a guard enters, and Erik panics—does Scott want him to—with the _guard_ as well? With a commoner? This isn’t anything like a mating ceremony, where only the most honored get to even touch the omega, this is something base and degrading—but if Scott wants it like this, Erik can—Erik can oblige him—Scott strides forward, picks Erik up by the arm, and deposits him in the custody of the guard. Then he rushes outside, leaving the scrolls forgotten behind him.

The guard doesn’t fuck him. The guard doesn’t even look at him with enough interest for Scott to have told him what Erik tried. The guard, after a long look of confusion—perhaps wondering why he was alone with an alpha who’s not his mate in the first place—just takes him back to Charles’s chambers and speaks briefly with the men on the door. When Erik tries to slip outside, maybe to find Raven and try his luck again, the guards bar his way with their halberds, and he gets the message; he’s officially a prisoner here.  
  
  
  
Charles is ostensibly reading the latest missive from Jean when Scott bursts into his study. Really, he’s thinking about Erik, as he often does now.

He’d thought Erik was all right with the pregnancy. After he’d discovered him singing that lullaby, he’d thought Erik had made peace with the idea of their child growing inside of him. But for the last few days, Erik has been walking around pale and jumpy, and he showed up with finger-shaped bruises— _bruises_ —on his wrists. Goddamnit, Erik is supposed to be _safe_ now, away from that monster Shaw and a life where the most he could look forward to were long stretches of pregnancy in between bouts of being raped by multiple alphas. Has he been sparring again? Charles had thought he’d impressed upon Erik the importance of resting, for the baby’s sake—

“My lord,” Scott says.

“Can this wait?” Charles says.

“I—no, my lord.” Charles glances up. Scott looks hellishly uncomfortable, and also terrified. Charles sets aside the missive from Jean and gestures for Scott to go on.

“My lord—” He swallows. For all his urgency, he doesn’t look eager to choke out whatever it is he needs to say. He glances at his hands, and then kneels; Charles’s eyebrows go up. Scott is the newest of his generals, elevated to his status through his marriage with Jean, but he is confident and calm under pressure and has never knelt out of what looks like frightened obeisance. “My lord, I thought you should know… Your mate…”

“Erik?” Charles says sharply, standing. “Has something happened to him? Is he all right?”

“He’s fine,” Scott says hastily, “and nothing happened. But. A short while ago, he tried to… he propositioned me.”

Charles—laughs, a short bark of amusement. This is the least funny joke he’d heard in a long while, and he feels the grin stretching his face strain, a terrible tendency of his to smile when he is annoyed. “Scott, he can’t even speak the language. What on earth did he do to make you think that?”

“It was… fairly obvious,” Scott says diplomatically.

“For god’s sake, Scott,” Charles says, very annoyed now, “you know better than to come to me with accusations of this sort just because of a cultural misunderstanding—my god, what it could do to his reputation, or mine, for that matter—”

“He dropped to his knees and tried to suck my cock!” Scott bursts out, and then covers his face with his gloved hands, though Charles can see the embarrassment burning in his ears. Charles breathes, slowly, trying to digest what he’s just heard. _He dropped to his knees and tried to suck my cock,_ Scott’s voice drones in his head on repeat. _He dropped to his knees and tried to suck my cock._ Is Charles breathing? His hand is shaking. He balls it into a fist and grinds it on the arm of his chair to try and stop it. He doesn’t think he’s breathing.

“Why,” Charles says tonelessly, “would he do that?”

“I don’t know,” Scott says in a rush. “I—I pushed him away—nothing happened—he’s in your rooms now, waiting for—I mean, I sent him back to your rooms—you know I would _never_ , my lord, I would never betray Jean like that—or, or you—”

Charles’s leg gives out. He collapses heavily into his chair. His heart has started pounding hard enough in his chest that it’s giving him a headache. His fist is still shaking. _He dropped to his knees and tried to suck my cock._ Unimaginable. Untenable. The thought of Erik with someone else—no. “Why,” he says, and can’t even muster the strength to ask the rest of that question. “Why would—”

“My lord,” Scott says, anguished, and rage builds in Charles until it boils over; he strikes the table with his fist, feeling the skin over his knuckles split open, and he relishes the pain, he savors the outlet for the pain and anger in his chest that has sharpened to a point and is now digging into his heart. Is he not enough for Erik? A King and the father of his child, outweighed by the fact that he is an aging cripple? What had Erik been _thinking_? That it wouldn’t get back to him? That he could just betray the King and lie with a general and Charles wouldn’t have him—wouldn’t be forced to—

But even as he thinks it, he knows that he wouldn’t hurt Erik like he should, like he is honor-bound to. He—he loves his mate, he _adores_ him, traitorous bitch though he might be, and he’d thought. He’d thought that Erik had loved him as well; the way he curls up close to him in bed, the way he lets himself be fucked with an enthusiasm so great that Charles has to gag him lest the guards spread salacious rumors about how the King’s omega enjoys his marital duties a little _too_ much, the way he touches his belly and smiles, the way he responds to Charles’s attempts to teach him the language with a bright, alert focus and a shy grin whenever Charles praises him. Goddamnit. Of course he would never allow Erik to be executed or punished, even if he brings down the kingdom with his appetites.

Shaw had leered, “You’ll have to take a firm hand with this one,” before he’d allowed himself to be escorted back to the carriage and sent back to Genosha. Perhaps he’d been right. Perhaps he’d known that Genoshan omegas were really all that the rumors said they were. Or perhaps this is his revenge; saddle Charles with a mate that he can’t help but love, and who can’t help but be… what he was.

“My lord,” Scott says, and Charles flinches; he’s almost forgotten Scott is there. Scott is loyal, of course. Scott would never confess his King’s moment of abominable weakness, even under torture; he would keep the way in which Charles has allowed weakness to consume his heart when dealing with his unruly omega a secret to his grave. “If you cannot… he’s going to get himself killed if he carries on like this. You must tell him, if you cannot… sire children… that there are other ways—”

“You think I’m—”

“I would, if you commanded it, and Jean was all right with it,” Scott babbles, “but—”

“He’s already pregnant,” Charles snaps.

“Oh.” Scott looks taken aback, and Charles can’t even fault him for it; he’s longing for the moment when Erik starts showing obviously and it becomes decorous to speak about the pregnancy, because there had been rumors ever since his injury that he couldn’t produce heirs, and in spite of Erik’s… indiscretions, he is confident that the heir is his own, given the way Erik had languished in his rooms with no one for company during the first weeks of their acquaintance, taking, he is sure, no one’s knot but his own. “In that case, I—it wasn’t—I don’t think he wanted me. Like that. I—I know it’s not my place—I know you’re in my rights to have me—” He cuts himself off, swallows, and Charles rubs his temples with his aching fingers.

 _I’m not going to have you executed for treason, Scott,_ he says in Scott’s mind, sure that if he tries to speak his voice will betray him.

Scott takes a deep, shuddering breath of relief, but presses forward. That’s one of the things Charles had always liked about Scott—his determination to do what was right, even if it put himself at risk. “And him? My lord, I don’t know why he… did what he did, but he was terrified. I could see it. Have you…” He struggles briefly with himself, before he tilts his head up and says, baldly, “The poor thing has bruises on his wrists, my lord.”

“Are you accusing me of beating my mate, Summers,” Charles says coldly.

Scott, in spite of the way he is very much a hair’s breadth away from spending the night in the dungeon, looks at Charles for a moment, surveying him, taking in the shape of his rage and the genuineness of his disbelief, before he shakes his head. “No, my lord. I know you love him,” Scott says, his voice firm with his conviction—whatever he’d seen in Charles’s face had been enough to convince him that the King who could not take his omega in hand also could not be rough with him even before he had known about… about what Erik had tried. He seems steadier, now that he’s been reassured he won’t be killed for having the gall to be favored by the King’s omega over the King himself. Charles _aches_. Scott is younger and handsomer and uninjured, and Charles— “I just think there is something else going on. Have you ever considered—” he waggles his fingers by his head, a sure reference to Charles’s telepathy.

"I would never demean him like that," Charles snaps.

“Then perhaps you should send for Jean’s return,” Scott says, plaintive. He has not moved from his kneeling position on the floor, hyperaware of the way in which his position is very much dependent on Charles’s tolerance for him at the moment, but he is acting as Charles’s general, the one he’d entrusted to challenge him and push back against him, to do what was best for the country even if that meant standing up to Charles. “I know the work she is doing is important, but—this is important too, my lord.”

Of course it is. Charles knows the stories, too, how a hedonistic omega can bring down a dynasty. He nods, briskly. “Send for her,” he says. “And get out.”

Scott scrambles to his feet and bows, obviously relieved to have this conversation done with, and shuts the door on his way out. Charles, still slouched in his chair, rubs wearily at his face with his aching hand. In the absence of Scott, his emotions, which he has grown so good at suppressing in front of others, rise to the surface and lap at him, threatening to overwhelm him, drag him down into the riptide below. Not young enough. Not vigorous enough. Not good enough.

His eyes sting.

He presses the heel of his hand into his eyes and tries not to shake apart.  
  
  
  
Erik waits for Charles to come and—and _tell him_ what he did wrong, to have Scott react like that, to be ushered back to his rooms and barred in like a prisoner. He paces until he tires—he tires so much more quickly nowadays, not allowed to spar or exercise and plied with rich, fattening foods—then lies on the bed and tries to “rest,” whatever it is Westchesterians believe lying on your back and not moving does for the body.

When the doors open, he sits bolt upright on the too-soft bed, his heart pounding in his chest, but relief slipping through him—Charles will tell him as best he can, Charles _always_ tries to let him know as best he can what’s going on—but it’s just a servant with a platter of food, some sort of steaming poultry roasted whole by the kitchens and dressed with greens, more vegetables and berries on the side. Charles has always made sure he had berries with every meal, ever since the time he’d broken down nearly in tears because of a craving for winterberries, and they’re not the same, but it’s nice. Erik picks at his food. He eats a little, because the baby needs it, but he’s distracted, his ears pricking and head darting up whenever he hears footsteps in the corridor outside.

He wants Charles, but Charles doesn’t come that night.

The next day, he is agitated. He tries to slip past the guards again, but the usual sleepy pair stationed at Charles’s bedroom door have been replaced by alert, fierce-looking warriors who take one look at him and shake their heads, and Erik slinks back into the bedroom, panic burning in his breast. The meals come regularly, but Erik eats less and less as the day goes on; he can’t sleep that night, tossing and turning at every sound, every time the guards shift, waiting with bated breath for the moment when Charles returns to him. Perhaps he’s busy, Erik thinks, trying to soothe himself. He rubs a hand over his belly. “Perhaps he is busy,” he whispers to it, and listens for a response, though of course none comes.

He doesn’t see Charles the second night, either.

On the third evening, when Erik has worked himself up into a panic—

Erik doesn’t even look up when the doors open, as it’s about time for supper; he’s lying on his side on the bed, curled up, speaking to the tiny burgeoning swell of his belly. “It’ll be all right,” he whispers to it. It aches when he does—he thinks of his mother, whose last words to him were _Everything will be fine,_ right before Shaw drew his dagger across her throat as Erik screamed— “I will make it all right. You’ll be just fine, my little love. I’m sure of it.” But he notices when no footsteps move closer; and he definitely notices it when after a moment, Charles’s familiar uneven step raps out on the floor. He sits up, desperate, relieved, his emotions surging so strongly he’s not even sure what he’s feeling, and bites his lip before he can use Charles’s familiar name. Even though he’s thought of him as Charles since almost the beginning, in private he’s never been sure if he’s supposed to call Charles “alpha” or “my lord,” however you say those in Westchesterian. Charles, of course, calls him simply “Erik.”

But he doesn’t greet Erik now. His expression is shuttered and cold. Erik rises, struggling out of the plushness of the bed, and goes to Charles, but Charles brushes him off; he stumps to the desk set in the corner alcove and begins gathering papers. Erik hovers, uncertain, his hands rubbing over his belly reflexively, self-soothingly. It will be all right now. Charles will fuck him, and sleep beside him, and everything will be all right.

Erik keeps telling himself that right up until Charles turns to leave.

He whimpers. Tries out the phrase in Westchesterian that the guards and servants use to address Charles, though he’s not quite sure how it translates.

Charles stops, but only for a moment, and then he’s banging on the door, waiting for the guards to open it again. Erik crosses to him, seizes his hand—begs him, with his eyes—please, tell me, please, I don’t know what’s happening, have you tired of me? Is it the child? Please, please, just tell me something—but Charles roughly shakes him off and strides out the door. When Erik tries to follow him, the guards take him gently by the shoulders and push him back at a command from Charles, and the doors close on him, shuddering and absolute, and Erik begins to tremble, as the enormity of what he stands to lose dawns on him.

Charles has clearly tired of him. At any moment, the guards could come to escort him to—someone else—he won’t even continue to make use of Erik until the baby is born, he’s so _incensed_ that Erik would try to reach above his station, would try to seek a private ceremony from Scott. This is proof, then. Proof that his children aren’t legitimate. Perhaps he’s angry that Erik would decrease his value to Cain or—whoever; it is one thing to be gifted a slave who’s only known the King’s cock, it’s another thing entirely to be gifted a whore who’s known common use. Erik paces, planning, his hands running through his heart, his heartbeat fluttering in his chest. He can’t. He just can’t face it, whatever awaits here for him. He’s already in disgrace and he _doesn’t know why_ and they’ll take the baby from him, they’ll give it to a nanny and he’ll never see them, and Charles is _angry_ and he doesn’t know what will happen to him. To them. His life is not his own anymore.

He waits that night, in miserable hope that Charles will return to him, will fuck him and let Erik know that everything is going to be all right, but he doesn’t. He stays awake and alert, though he tires quickly, for the sound of footsteps and guards coming to take him somewhere else, perhaps to Cain’s chambers, but they never come. He has another day, perhaps, or another hour. He dresses warmly for the Westchesterian chill; his thickest and plainest clothes, the cloak Logan had given to him on that first day. Hopefully it will throw pursuers off his scent, and it is comfortable and comforting besides, the scent of a protective alpha, as he doesn’t have his own mate to lean on anymore.

When he is ready, he rests a hand on his belly, takes a moment to imagine running his fingers through short and downy hair, cradling a tiny fragile head against his breast. It’s an indulgence he doesn’t allow himself for long, because at any moment there could be the footsteps of several more guards in the hallway, and he can handle the two on the door, but any more and he’s risking the baby.

He knocks on the door. The guards open it for him. They blink when they see him dressed to go out—one reaches for him, shaking his head—and Erik reaches out and strikes him in the throat hard enough that he stumbles backward, gasping, choking. The other guard spins, reaching for her sword, but clearly hesitates the moment she gets her hand on the hilt, and for once, Westchester’s inane perceptions of omegas are working in his favor. Erik nimbly slips the helm off the guard gasping on the ground and swings it at the second guard’s head hard enough that steel dents on steel; she staggers, then sits down hard, dazed. Erik brings his knee up into her chin and knocks her out, then does the same with the guard on the floor.

He only has moments now.

He slips down the corridors, praying to anyone who’ll listen that he doesn’t get lost, that he remembers the route down to the side entrance. He hunches in his cloak, moving swiftly past servants, none of whom glance at him twice—he’s not the King’s favored bedslave anymore, he’s just a stranger in a cloak, perhaps a messenger moving quickly to earn his bread. The door—thank all the gods and the goddess—is right where he remembers it, propped open for the day’s business to traffic between the indoors and the outside. He slips past a third guard, who is yawning and has his eyes closed, but Erik keeps his head down anyway.

And then he’s outside, breathing cold fresh air for the first time in months, and he takes a moment to savor it, the biting nip of the wind that causes him to draw the cloak more securely around himself, the distinctive odor of merchants and servants and horses—god, _horses_ —hanging heavy in the air. Behind him, a servant snaps out a rebuke, and he hurries out of the way. From this vantage point, he can see the stables, a long low building with a wide entrance that a squire is leading a horse through at that moment. He hurries toward it.

If he can just reach Genosha. He has friends there, friends who will hide him from Shaw, he can have his child and keep them safe from the Westchesterian court, from whatever they’ll be expected to do here, as the child of a slave. In the stables, no one seems to notice him; he finds a courser, sleek and strong, that reminds him of his father’s favored horse from before the coup, and hesitantly reaches out and lets the horse approach him. He murmurs to it gently, not loud enough that anyone else will hear and recognize the Genoshan, until it lets him stroke its massive nose. “Good,” he says softly. “Good.”

He unlocks the stable door and leads it out. A groom tries to stop him, but he ignores him, eyes the saddles stacked against the wall but decides against it; the saddles are built differently from the ones he’s used to, and it’s not like he can’t ride a horse bareback, he’s not a child. The groom’s mild protestations turn to shouts, but by that time Erik is already on the horse, which looks at him, startled, probably, to not have been saddled first, but he ignores it, he ignores the ruckus around him, the groom trying to snatch at the reins, and nudges the horse into motion.

They barrel out of the stable, and Erik angles the horse across the courtyard for the gate, pressing his knees into the horse’s sides. Freedom. It hits him with a powerful breathlessness. He’s on a horse again for the first time in months, since Shaw had loaded him onto that carriage, and the sheer _freedom_ of it makes him giddy, makes him light-headed. He runs a grateful hand down its neck, imagines getting out of the city and being free to kick it into a canter, then a gallop; how it will feel to be rushing _home._

Away from Charles. Shame hits him. His people were counting on him—but he knows what he is—Charles will hardly go to war with Genosha to get a slave back—and his child is more important, now, more important than his responsibilities, more important than his unfortunate, reckless love for the man who is his master, more important than anything. He won’t let them be taken from him. He won’t let them be subject to the same degradation at the hands of the court that he has been.

So he’s not paying attention to his surroundings, hyperfocused on the gate, and it’s not until another horse—a destrier this time, bulky and towering and built for war—and its rider’s path intersect with his that he pulls up, startled, and looks into Charles’s cold, unforgiving eyes.

His horse shies. The last bit of hope drains out of Erik’s heart.

Charles’s lips form words that he can’t decipher, but which he intimately understands: _Get off the horse._  
  
  
  
He doesn’t fight.

Charles has brought with him Logan and Scott, twelve guards, and by now surely alerted the guards on the gate not to let him out by any means necessary. Erik knows when he’s been bested. He can’t fight and risk harm coming to the baby. He dismounts dispiritedly; Charles beckons, and Erik, his hands shaking, mounts Charles’s warhorse in front of him with Logan’s help. Seated in front of Charles, bracketed by his legs, the injured one of which is in a brace to stabilize its movements against the horse, Erik can’t see Charles’s expression, can only gauge how much trouble he’s in by the cold fury wafting from him.

Charles takes the ride back to the stables at a trot, the clink and clamor of the guards on horseback behind him audible. Erik has never been more afraid in his entire life, including when he’d thought that Shaw would kill him next, after he murdered his mother in front of him. At least then, he was only scared for himself.

Surely Charles won’t hurt the baby? Even if he doesn’t want it, doesn’t want _Erik?_ Erik remembers the joy that had alighted on Charles’s expression when Hank had confirmed he was pregnant; surely, in spite of the way Erik has—made _whatever_ mistakes he’s made, he’s still not certain why Charles is so _angry_ , except that he tried to steal his property away—surely some vestige of that man still exists in Charles?

When Charles arrives back at the stables, the grooms and squires remove the brace with well-practiced motions, and offer a hand to help Erik down. In spite of the danger he’s in, he rolls his eyes. He’s pregnant, he’s not an invalid; he vaults down himself and then cringes when Charles growls, low and forbidding. Charles dismounts, an awkward movement made graceful with practice, and then seizes Erik’s arm and drags him inside. Up the stairs, to the low squat tower where Charles’s rooms are; Erik stumbles, tries to twist out of Charles’s grip, but his fingers, while not bruising, are iron on Erik’s upper arm. The doors are unguarded and open. Charles all but throws Erik inside and then turns to shove the doors shut.

Erik stumbles, nearly hits the bed; he sinks to the ground at the foot of the bed, crouched against the heavy wooden footboard, and curls up around his belly as best he can. It’s been made quite clear that he’s not allowed to defend himself, but he’s going to protect the baby. Charles can beat him, Charles can take a paddle or a whip to him, as long as he doesn’t touch Erik’s stomach; he will endure it gladly, as long as the baby is safe.

When the doors have creaked closed, Charles turns back to Erik. His expression flickers when he sees him curled before the bed, just a moment of—sympathy, perhaps?—before he returns to his cold, frightening mask. He strides toward Erik, and Erik flinches; but instead of delivering a hard kick, like Shaw would, Charles drops to his own knees and grips Erik by the shoulders, doesn’t try to pry his legs and arms away from where they’re curled around his belly, only presses his forehead to Erik’s and—

—and—

—and Erik can _hear_ him, in his head, in Genoshan—no—not Genoshan, but something he understands, something purer, with meanings more absolute than the fussiness of language. Charles is _thinking_ into his head, and it’s not like Emma’s telepathy at all, it’s crisp and clear and doesn’t hurt in the slightest, it’s _words_ but more than words. _I didn’t want to do this,_ Charles thinks, and Erik shivers—he can feel his fury—but underneath that… confusion and hurt and… something else, something that shimmers when Erik tries to look at it too closely— _but you are_ impossible. _I don’t understand you_ at all. _Why? Tell me why._

Erik doesn’t understand what he’s asking, but there’s only one answer to the question of why he’s done anything he’s done over the last weeks, and so he thinks about his churning, swallowing fear for the baby, concentrates on it until Charles flinches and draws away.

 _You’re afraid,_ Charles realizes. He’s withdrawn a little, no longer pressing their foreheads together; instead, he brings a hand up to his temple, as if to focus his abilities. In spite of himself, Erik is fascinated—he wonders if Charles has to do it to concentrate well enough to use his powers, or if it’s an affectation, something to put people at ease. _Of me?_

 _I—_ Erik struggles with the concept of it. No, he’s not afraid of Charles, exactly. He’s afraid of what Charles might do. _Please don’t take them away from me_ , he thinks instead, a rush of sentiment more panic than words. _Please please I’ll be good I know I’m not—_ here a constellation of meanings, consort-concubine-valued-partner— _but please don’t punish the baby. I know you’ve tired of me but if you take me back I can be good, I’ll be so good for you—_

 _Wait, wait!_ Charles’s expression is twisted in awful confusion. _Slow down, slow down. I’m not—I’d_ never— Charles grunts in frustration. He moves slowly, bringing his forehead closer to Erik’s again, until they’re just touching. Erik closes his eyes as he feels Charles sweeping through his mind, turning over the words again, trying to make sense of them. _Erik, darling… what do you think you’re doing here?_

In the clarity of mind-to-mind, Erik can tell that Charles is asking what he thinks his position is in the court. Erik sends back their first night, when he was claimed in the shadows and the silence of Charles’s private bedchambers, and not shown off and adored in front of his people—he thinks of the collar around his throat that he has almost stopped feeling except when he reaches for his metal-sense and gets a pang like that of a phantom limb—he thinks of the way Charles is only now using his telepathy, when he could have made it so much easier for Erik to speak with him, at least, if he had really thought of Erik as a partner. He thinks of Scott. Of how Scott had been not jut unreceptive but _repulsed_ by Erik’s request for an informal ceremony. Charles’s expression goes from confusion to sorrow to horror.

 _Erik,_ he thinks, _that’s not—_

He cuts himself off, apparently unable to figure out how to finish that sentence even in his own mind, and instead, gently, his hands coming up until they cradle Erik’s face, thinks of the moment he first saw him. The moment Shaw led him into the court, bare and collared, and Charles—

Charles remembers picking at his food.

He is to be mated soon. _Mated._ He stretches his telepathy out into the hall, waiting for the presence of foreign minds, and when he feels them, he retracts his thoughts, out of respect for his future mate. (He draws back from Shaw _not_ out of respect, but because he had already been in that mind once before—when Shaw had allowed him to glimpse what his future omega looked like—and Charles had, despite Frost’s capable shielding, caught sight of not only a lovely creature, lashes long and expression still in sleep, but also fragments of Shaw’s other feelings about him—a sadistic lust, a memory-fantasy of the omega, his face bloodied and twisted with rage, snapping his teeth at Shaw when he tried to pet his hair. Charles had no choice but to accept the bargain—he’d always known he’d have a political marriage—but he found that he _wanted_ to, if for no other reason than to get this beautiful omega away from Shaw, who would break him with his base lusts, who _wanted_ to break him. Charles stays out of Erik’s mind because he is to be a partner, above all but the King himself, and he will afford him the same courtesy he does Raven, his most trusted general, and not use his telepathy the way he does with the lower echelons. Charles stays out of Shaw’s mind because he never wants to find himself trapped in that tar pit again.) The doors swing open and Shaw steps through, and behind him—

Charles is ashamed that the first thing he notices about the omega is that he is even more stunning naked and in person than he had been in Shaw’s mind. He is slim but tall, broad shoulders tapering down to a neat little waist, lovely cock resting soft and vulnerable in a nest of reddish curls, his pale eyes darting as he takes in everything, keen and sharp and clever, Charles can tell already. The _second_ thing he registers is that the poor boy is naked and scarred, and as the boy asks something of Shaw he stands, snarling out “ _What is the meaning of this?”_ Shaw smirks and the boy glances at him, fear swimming deep in those light, beautiful eyes. The boy doesn’t seem ashamed of his nakedness, but he wants to tell the poor thing that he is _not_ like Shaw, he won’t have him taken by multiple alphas in front of the whole court, and Shaw _knows_ that, damn the man for filling the boy’s head with lies and slander, who knows what he thinks of Charles and Westchester already. Charles snaps out an order, and Logan vaults the table, already unbuttoning his cloak to cover up Charles’s lovely abused mate, who looks so confused as he’s wrapped in the cloak, like he’d been expecting to never be allowed clothing again.

Charles gestures at Jean, who rises gracefully and takes charge of the boy, and turns back to Shaw, color flaming on his cheeks, snarling, “You come here to my court bringing my _mate_ to me like a common whore—how dare you?!” How dare he treat _anyone_ like this, least of all the omega who will become the Royal Consort of Westchester? 

_Consort?_ Erik thought-trembles now, surprise rippling through him and into Charles.

Charles runs a gentle hand through his hair, says nothing, concentrates on the memory, where Shaw is sneering, “I only thought to ease the way for you and your generals and… whoever you wish to give the boy to, I suppose it's not any of my business anymore.”

The whispers that rush through the court at this seeming confirmation of the barbarity of Genoshan sexual practices are galling. Charles will be doing damage control for _ages_ , and already the story he will have to tell, the rescue of a dishonored prince and the tenuousness of alliances with Shaw, rings in his head. Charles grits his teeth and announces, for the benefit of the court as much as Shaw, “You know that won’t be happening here. He is _mine_ , and mine alone, and he will be treated with all honors as befits his station.”

“Then I wish you joy of him, King Charles,” Shaw purrs, and Charles feels, unaccountably, like he’s lost the game, even as he gestures for Shaw to be returned to the carriage that brought him here from Genosha. _I understand now,_ Charles thinks at him, slowly prising from Erik each thought he’s ever had about his station. _He never told you, did he? And I never thought to tell you because… I never thought. It’s not the same here. You don’t have to—to let them hurt you just because I honor them. I honor_ you, _above all._

 _Hurt?_ Erik is struggling to think through the things Charles has shown him, the humiliation he hadn’t even known to feel, the attraction and the protectiveness and the _devotion_ that Erik had never expected, not in his wildest fantasies, but he knows that’s not right. _It’s not hurt—it’s loyalty—a swearing of fealty to me and my children—_

 _They are already loyal,_ Charles thinks, sincerity thrumming through him. _They have already sworn. You remember our wedding?_

_Our… wedding?_

Charles remembers bloody sheets on the ground and silk ropes binding their hands together. _Handfasting_ , Charles thinks, and it’s a strange new word, but as Erik turns it over in his mind, he sees that it is bound up in, for Charles, connotations of promise and devotion and love, and that one is new and surprising to them both. _Yes,_ Charles thinks, _I love you,_ and Erik closes his eyes so that tears don’t spill out. Charles makes a hushing sound with his lips and sends a soothing feeling of fingers stroking through his hair with his telepathy, and Erik sniffles and stills. _I thought you would be glad, that you didn’t have to… to mate with them. Like you would have with Shaw. It always seemed… disrespectful to me. A humiliation you would be glad to forgo. I didn’t realize… I didn’t think what it might look like to you, or I would have tried harder to explain._

 _I am glad,_ Erik thinks, _not to be Shaw’s mate, but—that’s because of him, not the ceremony. All this time, you really thought of me…_

 _As my consort,_ Charles confirms. _As my own._

Erik bites his lip. _You won’t send me away? You won’t tire of me?_

 _No sooner than I could tire of my own limbs,_ Charles thinks gently.

 _And the child?_ Erik thinks hesitantly.

_My heir. My beautiful baby._

Erik cries out and finally uncurls; he flings his arms around Charles’s neck and buries his face in his shoulder. Charles murmurs soothing words, no longer translating, just a faint presence at the edge of Erik’s mind. _Why did you never speak to me like this before?_ Erik asks, anguished. _Why did you never tell me—_

 _It’s taboo,_ Charles thinks, a hint of shame in his mental voice. _Telepathy is for those I command; those I love are granted mental privacy. You were doing so well, learning the language—I didn’t realize how much you were suffering._ He nuzzles at Erik’s ear. _I will not leave you alone in your mind again. So long as you’ll have me._

 _Please,_ Erik thinks fervently. His thoughts are slow from relief and exhaustion; it’s like thinking through honey. He goes over the events of the past few days, trying to figure out what to apologize for. _I’m sorry I ran. And I’m sorry—about Scott—_ he thinks, because it feels right, though he still struggles to wrap his mind around the idea that it would be a betrayal of his—his husband?—to lie with his generals.

Flashes in Charles’s mind, quick enough that Erik supposes he’s not supposed to see them: _I’m not going to have you executed for treason_ and relief that Charles didn’t punish him like he should have after all, didn’t withhold food or lock him in the dungeon. Erik shudders at the idea of being starved and is doubly grateful for Charles’s sufferance; he’s pregnant, the baby needs sustenance. Charles doesn’t answer, simply strokes a thumb down Erik’s cheekbone, closes his eyes and inhales Erik’s scent. At last, Charles opens his eyes and gently pulls back. He takes Erik’s hands and faces them up so that his wrists are exposed, the yellowing bruises ugly in the dim light issuing from the window. _And these?_ he asks.

Erik reminds himself: _No sooner than I could tire of my own limbs._ And he thinks of the memory. Cain, leering, Cain, sneering syllables he didn’t understand but, it turns out, can remember in perfect clarity, and Charles tries to shield him from the way he automatically translates the words but Erik can still catch fragments— _slut—have you on your knees, bitch_ — _share you soon enough._

Charles also can’t shield Erik from his incandescent rage, which sparks quickly and burns high. _I’ll have his goddamn head,_ Charles thinks fiercely, and oh, Erik realizes, Cain is not in favor at the court after all; he sees Cain as Charles sees him, as a drunken lout forever resentful he only married into the royal family and was not born to it as Charles was, an abominable prince who would make an even more abominable king. Feeling rather silly that he’d ever worried that Charles would give him over, Erik lays back, drags Charles with him so that he’s on his hands and knees kneeling over him. Erik sighs and kisses him, and he can feel Charles’s anger melt.

Charles kisses him with a fierce possessiveness he’s never had before, he clutches at Erik’s body and drags him close, and Erik can feel the pulsing in his mind, _I almost lost you, I almost lost you, I almost lost our child._ Erik quivers at the intensity of that emotion; if there were any doubt in his mind that Charles were lying to placate him, and why would he? he is the King, he can do whatever he wants to Erik—but _won’t_ , and that realization is stunning and beautiful—it is gone now. Erik draws his legs up and wraps them around Charles’s waist, where he can feel him thickening and hardening in his trousers. It has been _days_ since Charles fucked him well, and he can feel it, the longing he has as an omega to be bred and filled, no matter that his stomach is already heavy with child. He thinks of Charles’s terrible rage when he had gone to Scott, and whispers, hoping that Charles will understand, “Take me, alpha—I want you—I _only_ want you—for all the rest of my days—”

And Charles moans low in his throat and kisses Erik even more fiercely. Erik is slowly coming around to the idea that he can be Charles’s, and Charles’s alone, and still have a place for himself in the court, and still have a place for his child in the court, and he has more questions and the collar is still on and he still needs to ask about _nannies_ but they can have all of those conversations later, for now he just wants to be fucked by his mate, for now he just wants to be filthily, headily _adored._

Charles fumbles with the cloak Erik is still wearing and throws it across the room—Erik remembers vaguely that there is the scent of another alpha on it, which must be maddening to Charles’s senses—and then scrabbles for the fastenings of his tunic. He gets his fingers into the seam and _rips_ , and Erik feels, distantly, at the back of Charles’s mind, a sort of primal satisfaction that Erik will have nothing warm to try to escape in if he wants to again, and he tries stroking a soothing sort of mental finger through Charles’s mind, and watches him calm under his gaze. Charles is saying something roughly, and when Erik listens, the sounds transmute into words: _Mine, mine, mine._ “Yours,” he gasps, and turns over as Charles shoves his leggings down, already slicking up, so wet and ready for Charles’s cock and knot. “Yours, yours, yours.”

Instead of clenching a hand in his hair, instead of grinding his face into the stone floor, Charles rests a gentle hand on the small of his back and eases himself in. Erik moans helplessly, pitifully, so grateful to have Charles inside of him again after long, lonely nights spent watching the door in case he decided to take pity on him and return, and Charles starts an easy, gentle rhythm, one punctuated by gentle caresses of Erik’s skin. One hand drifts down to his belly and traces patterns across the beginnings of his bump, and Erik moans, oversensitive, feeling the _heat_ of Charles inside of him and weight of Charles above him and the slow drag of his cock against his inner walls. He tries to draw him in deeper, closer, by thrusting his hips up, pushing against Charles’s thrusts, and Charles groans, picking up the pace but remaining gentle, keeping his touches soothing and soft against Erik’s skin.

They go on like that for what seems like hours, hours of Charles gently prying Erik apart and putting him back together, hours of Charles driving into him his love and affection telepathically, until Erik squirms and cries out around him, cock and mind both. Erik clenches around Charles, moans spilling from his lips, addicted to the feeling of being able to light the air up with his cries instead of the muffled sounds of him gasping into the gag.

When he can feel the knot swelling against him Charles doesn’t grind it inside of him; instead, he pulls out and turns Erik over and pushes into him again, thinking, _I want to see your face._ And Erik opens his eyes and lets them lock onto Charles, but it’s so hard to look at him, it’s like looking into the sun he’s only seen today for the first time in months, and his eyes close of their own accord and he cries out and spills as he feels Charles’s knot lodge inside of him, his hole fluttering around it, his cunt gripping it tightly and milking it of come. He feels the hot wet seed, so much of it, spill inside him, and thinks dazedly of making a twin for the baby, though he knows that’s not how biology works.

Charles lies over him, stroking down his side, until the knot goes down. And then a little while longer.  
  
  
  
They don’t sleep on the floor, because of Charles’s leg and Erik’s condition. They move to the bed—Charles fucks him again—he drifts off to sleep with the sense that, for the first time since he arrived here, everything might actually be okay. When he opens his eyes, Charles is gone, and he has a brief moment of panic before he registers Jean’s shock of red hair and her tentative smile.

“I’ll let you get dressed,” she says gently, and then, as if just thinking of it, “…it can be rude here, to see someone else naked. I don’t know if anyone ever told you that.”

Erik has figured it out—he doesn’t understand it, warriors in Genosha are far from body-shy, but he has noticed it—and he slips out of bed quickly to don a light tunic and leggings from the chest in Charles’s closet. The clothes he had been wearing yesterday have been cleared away, he notices, and were a total loss anyway. “I didn’t know you had returned,” Erik says as he struggles with the lacings of his tunic. He can do it now, but it takes him a while.

“Let me,” Jean says, and in swift, neat motions does up the lacing on the sides. “And Charles sent for me a few days ago. He was worried about you. He wanted to have someone who could translate, but I suppose you solved that issue yourselves, hm?” She sounds—a little disapproving. Erik ducks his head. Jean smiles at him, a little sadly. “It’s a question of telepathy, that’s all. I’m not mad at you. Well, not anymore. Charles explained to me about Scott.”

“Scott?”

“He’s my husband,” Jean says blandly. Erik thinks through the implications. If generals in Westchester aren’t expected to lie with the King’s consort to prove their loyalty… oh. _Oh._ He flushes hard enough that he can feel the heat sizzling from his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out. Jean smiles wanly.

“Like I said,” she says, “Charles explained. He explained to Scott as well, though he was never angry at you, just concerned. Sit. Eat.”

Like that first night, she watches him as he methodically chews his way through the platter of food the kitchens have sent up. She smiles, motherly, though she’s younger than he is, he thinks, and pushes a bowl of cut fruit toward him when he starts slowing. “Congratulations,” she says, almost an afterthought. “On the baby.”

“Thank you,” Erik says shyly. It’s a strange turn of phrase, being congratulated on the pregnancy. In Genosha, he would receive prayers for his health and the baby’s, but not congratulations. “I… have the negotiations finished?”

“Not quite,” Jean says. “But they’re more stable than they were before. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help you adjust, but they were quite urgent.”

“And I took you away from them?” Erik says, a little dismayed, a little glad to see a friendly face again, to be able to speak in his language. These are his people now, too. He wants what’s best for them, and not only because the well-being of his husband—husband!—and child depend on it. 

“Charles did,” Jean corrects gently. “You mean more to him than propriety. Ororo has taken over the negotiations in my stead. They have a translator there; not as good as me, but serviceable.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m also sorry… I didn’t tell you all the things you should have been told.” Erik starts shaking his head immediately, but Jean smiles at him kindly and says, “It was my responsibility. That night, Charles put you in my care. I can’t imagine how frightened you were. I was frightened on my wedding night, and I’ve grown up with these traditions.

“It was all right,” Erik says softly. “The King is… very kind.”

“I think,” Jean says, “he would like it if you called him Charles.”

Erik smiles tentatively. There’s a knock on the door; Jean swings her hand at it negligently and it creaks open. A servant bows to them both—to them both!—and says something in Westchesterian to Jean; she stands, dusting off her tunic, and holds out a hand to Erik. “Come,” she says, “the King wants us.”

She takes his arm, like a friend, and leads him down the hallways. Erik knows the castle well enough that he only gets lost about half the time, and guards flank them, herding them in the right direction, but it’s nice to be led, it’s nice to not have to worry about it. Jean stops not in the feasting hall but at a door that leads behind the throne of the great hall, which Erik has only seen a couple of times, and never set foot in; this is where the King holds court, hears audiences. She gestures for him to go on, and he does, hesitant.

Charles is standing in front of his throne, and a man is kneeling before him. He sees Erik, smiles, and beckons him closer. Erik goes, curious, but it’s not until he’s most of the way there that he recognizes the man at Charles’s feet. Cain.

He stops.

“Erik,” Charles says softly, and Erik shakily takes the next few steps to him. Has Charles changed his mind? Is he going to be given to Cain after all?

But Charles’s telepathy slots neatly into his thoughts and fills him with such over-brimming affection that his worries slough off. _Good morning, darling,_ he says, a hint of humor in his voice. _Did you sleep well?_

 _Yes,_ Erik thinks back. _You know I did._

Charles chuckles and brushes a wayward lock of hair from Erik’s forehead. _Cain has something to say to you,_ he thinks, and when he says Cain’s name his mind grows dark, thundercloud-like, and he turns to Cain, who is kneeling so low Erik can’t see his expression. “Well?” he says coldly, staying in Erik’s mind so that Erik can understand what’s going on.

Cain looks up, and Erik gasps. His expression is twisted in hatred; he stares at Erik like he would like to tear him limb from limb, and Erik cringes back into Charles’s arms. In a flash, Charles’s good foot lashes out and kicks Cain in the shoulder; he staggers back, and the hatred redirects from Erik to Charles. “You do not look at him like that,” Charles says, his voice imperious and absolute, the voice of a King. “Say your piece.”

Cain crawls forward. _Crawls,_ like someone begging for supplication, crawls to _him,_ and Erik realizes with a jolt that Charles _meant it_ when he said that Erik was above everyone in the court save for himself. Relief crashes through him. “Your majesty,” he grits out, _to Erik,_ and Erik registers distantly that Charles is still translating. “I am sorry for my behavior toward you earlier. I should not have laid hands on you.”

What is Erik supposed to say? He looks at Charles for guidance, and Charles thinks, _Anything you want. If you want to hurt him. If you want to accept graciously. I will back you, darling. I’ll be right here._

_I just want him to go away._

_Nod, then, and I’ll tell him._

Erik nods, and Charles turns to Cain and says, cruelly, “Now kiss his feet.”

The humiliation and rage are clear on Cain’s face, but he wrestles his expression under control before turning back to Erik. And then he leans forward. And kisses his feet.

Erik takes a shuddering breath. He’d been so scared of this man—of what would happen to him and the baby if he were given to Cain—he’d _run away,_ from Charles and his responsibilities and Westchester out of fear of Cain—and Charles had _seen that_ , and instead of telling him that he was silly, that he’d overreacted, he’d forced Cain to grovel to him in front of a room of courtiers, had cemented Erik’s place for all to see that he was a King’s bride, not a slave. He feels light-headed. Charles catches him as he sways, momentarily dizzy both from the change in expectations and the pregnancy both, and says, in clipped Westchesterian that Erik doesn’t bother to try to understand, something that causes Cain to rise and back away, his face still twisted in ugly hatred for Charles. Erik’s made an enemy this day. But Cain was already an enemy— _have you on your knees, bitch_ —and now that Erik knows that Charles is by his side, he will defend their child—their children, perhaps—from anyone and everything that might hurt them.

“Come,” Charles says lowly in Erik’s ear, “that’s enough of a spectacle for them for one day.” He dismisses the court with a series of arcane phrases that he’s too well-accustomed to to even bother to translated for Erik, and then turns back to Erik. “We should speak some more. I can ask for Jean to translate, if you’d like,” and Erik senses that same concern that perhaps he is somehow demeaning Erik through his use of telepathy on him.

Erik shakes his head. “I like you in my head,” he says shyly. “It’s comforting. It reminds me… that you love me.” He says the words hesitantly, like they may not be his to say, though Charles had promised Erik that he loved him just last evening. But Charles lights up, joy suffusing his face and his eyes, and he offers Erik his elbow in the same way that Jean did, and leads him out through the same door that Jean and the guards had escorted him through earlier. Jean is still waiting for them, but at a look from Charles, she nods, smiles, and melts away. 

Charles leads them back to his bedchambers, and settles Erik, oh so gently, into one of the chairs they’d used when they’d played chess. The chessboard is tucked away now, though, and Charles reaches across the table and grasps Erik’s hand, running his thumb over his knuckles. “You touch me more now,” Erik says aloud, trusting Charles to divine the meaning from his head and respond to it.

“You seemed so skittish,” Charles answers. “On and off, frightened and fearless. I was worried about doing anything to set you off. But I’ve been in your mind now; I know the affection you feel for me. So I am no longer worried about touching.” Erik smiles tremulously. “I also felt a great discontent when you thought of Westchester,” Charles says, not reprovingly, just a statement of fact, and Erik bites his lip and nods. “Can you tell me why?”

“The collar—” Erik says breathlessly.

“Ah.” Charles licks his lips. “The collar… it is customary, for when the King marries a foreigner with a gift, for the collar to remain on for a year or until the birth of the first child…” Erik is already shaking his head, desperate, his free hand going to the collar to tug at it futilely, like he has done every day since the wretched thing was locked over his throat. “Don’t,” Charles says gently, and reaches out and takes Erik’s hand until both of them are on the table, being held by Charles’s sure grip. “It bothers you that much?”

Erik nods mutely.

“Then I will tell the court I telepathically scanned your mind for ill will, and found none,” Charles says slowly, as though it’s an imperfect solution, though it sounds perfect to him. “The custom is to ensure that by the time the collar comes off, the consort’s loyalty is to Westchester, not their home, but… I want you to be happy, Erik. If removing the collar will make you happy, I will do that.”

“You don’t seem enthused about it,” Erik points out. “I think… there is something that I’m missing. Please, tell me. I want to be… I want to be what you said. _Consort._ I want to carry your burdens with you.”

Charles favors Erik with a brilliant smile. “All right,” he says gently. “It will lower your standing in the court, a little, when I tell them that I used my telepathy on you. I don’t want that—but I want you unhappy even less. If anyone tries to give you trouble, like Cain, you come to me, all right? I’ll set them straight.”

Erik considers it. “This is because of your taboo on telepathy,” he hazards.

“Yes—and if at any time you wish that I stop using it to translate—”

Erik shrugs. “The telepaths in Genosha used their gift freely,” he explains. “It doesn’t bother me, my King.”

The creases around Charles’s eyes deepen. “Charles,” he says. “Please. In private, among equals, it is Charles.”

“Charles,” Erik says shyly. He hasn’t said it aloud very often. “And when we’re not in private?”

“’My lord,’” Charles says, his voice forming the syllables slowly and precisely so that Erik can copy them. “It is what my generals call me. It is what Jean calls me, when she’s not being impudent. It is what all those I love and honor above the rest call me.” 

“I’m honored,” Erik whispers.

“ _I_ am honored,” Charles says, and runs his thumbs over Erik’s knuckles again. Erik stares at him and feels the unaccountable urge to drag him into bed. But no, he tells himself sternly, they’re talking now. He glances at the bed, and remembers.

“Where were you, when you did not come to me those nights?” he asks. Is there a favored concubine he needs to be aware of?

Charles snorts, as though he knows what Erik is thinking—which he does. “Asleep in a guest chamber,” he said, smiling faintly. “I should have rightly put you in the guest rooms, but… these are the nicest rooms, and the best-defended. Only the best for my husband and child.”

Well. Perhaps he can spare the time for one kiss.  
  
  
  
In bed, Charles’s knot still lodged inside him, Charles asks, “And what else is bothering you, darling? I’m certain it cannot only be the collar.”

Erik blinks dazedly, trying to bring himself back to reality. Being knotted is lovely; it makes the world move slowly, as though syrup, and turns him sleepy and docile. He thinks Charles likes it too, given the way he rubs his nose affectionately against Erik’s cheek. “I…” he says, slowly shaping the words. “I’m so… _bored,_ Charles, all the time. Is there anything I can do? Any duties for me to discharge? I’ll learn the language better, I promise—”

“You’re pregnant,” Charles says, a little reprovingly. “You need to rest.” He softens a little. “Is that not how they do it in Genosha?”

Erik shakes his head, slowly; the knot is still addling his brain. “Omegas are more careful, of course, and they don’t go into real battle after the first few months, but—I don’t understand why Westchesterians think omegas are so weak and delicate when we must handle giving birth—I’m only a few months pregnant, I can still do everything I would have—please, can I spar with someone?” _Spar,_ Charles mouths, as though taken aback by the very thought of it. “I am—I am allowed to defend myself, right?”

“Of course you are,” Charles says, appalled. “Why would you think that?”

Erik pushes an image of Charles’s anger when he found him sparring with Alex, and Charles sighs and nuzzles at Erik’s brow. “Perhaps I can arrange something.”

Erik can hardly dare to hope. “With Alex and Armando? Or your generals?”

“You miss them that much?” Charles smiles a little sadly. “Well, I’m glad you have friends. And… not the generals. You can’t be alone with alphas. It’s… indecorous.”

Erik adds this to his growing list of Westchesterian rules that are absurd but apparently part of his new life now. “Why?” he asks.

“They might… force themselves on you,” Charles says with difficulty, and a chill runs down Erik’s spine. “Not—they wouldn’t, though. I would entrust your life, our child’s life, to each and every one of my generals. But it would start rumors, and I… you have enough to deal with when it comes to aspersions about your chastity.”

“Because of what I tried with Scott?” Erik asks quietly.

“No… it’s just damned rumors about what Genoshans do in bed. It’s not your fault,” Charles adds reassuringly.

Erik shifts. The knot has softened, a little, but he clenches around it to keep it inside of him a little longer. “Is that… why you gag me?”

Expressions flicker across Charles’s face almost too fast to parse. “Does it bother you?”

Erik shakes his head slowly. “I… I thought you were ashamed of me.”

“Never ashamed of you,” Charles says. “But you are… very loud. I must face the guards in the morning, and it is difficult when they cannot even look me in the eye because they heard you screaming all night.”

“I can be quieter,” Erik promises, though he’s not actually sure if he can be. “Genoshans are nomadic—we live in tents—it’s normal to overhear people.” Charles colors at the thought of being overheard by all his subjects; Erik finds it unaccountably charming, given that the come and slick and blood-stained sheets of their first night together were displayed for all to see the day after, during their wedding. “But I can try.”

Charles kisses his nose. “If it bothers you, you never have to endure it again.”

“I like it sometimes,” Erik admits quietly. “I like being in your control so utterly. But… maybe not all the time?”

“Deal,” Charles says, and kisses him thoroughly. Erik melts into his touch, feeling almost liquid in Charles’s arms.  
  
  
  
When he wakes the next day, Alex and Armando are waiting for him outside Charles’s bedchambers. Jean is with them, to convey a message that the King says that he can spar, so long as he is careful, and Hank watches to make sure that no harm comes to the baby. Hank is busy, so he doesn’t get to spar as often as he likes, but any release of energy—beyond sex—invigorates him. He finds himself staying awake longer, not taking so many naps during the day, not staring listlessly at the ceiling even when he has nothing to do. He has language lessons with Jean and the silent but fortifying company of his guards, he has an unborn babe to imagine names and futures for, he asks Jean to teach him to be better at chess and she shows him some strategies that make Charles beam when he tries them. It is better. It is _so_ much better.

The collar comes off within the week. In his joy, Erik accidentally melts everything metal in the room, and sheepishly spends the day after mending the candlesticks and iron ornaments that had puddled all over Charles’s desk.  
  
  
  
One day, Charles enters his chambers soon after lunch, which he’d spent whispering in Erik’s ear all of the little petty scandals that each of the courtiers in the feasting hall had been privy to over the years. His cloak is bundled in his free arm, and Erik rises to greet him and kisses him, only pulling away when the bundle between them—moves?

“Charles?” he asks uncertainly.

“I know you’re still bored,” Charles says, almost shyly, “and Ororo’s monster of a barn cat had kittens. Logan suggested you might like one, so…” He digs around in the folds of the cloak and comes up with a small striped kitten, which he places in Erik’s outstretched hands.

“Oh,” Erik breathes. The kitten mewls and rubs its face against Erik’s fingers. “What is its name?”

“She doesn’t have one yet. I asked for the fiercest for you. I thought you might like a fighter.”

Erik glances at Charles through his eyelashes. “Would you name it, maybe?” he asks, and then, to cover up his vulnerability, blusters, “I don’t know any Westchesterian names. Except ‘Charles.’ And I think that might be treasonous.”

Charles laughs, low and long, and says, “Yes, perhaps. Hmmm. I’ll call her Logan, as she is fluffy and fierce and Logan is the reason she is in your care.” He runs a finger over her head; she hisses at him. “I don’t think she likes me, which is another very Logan-like quality.”

Logan-the-kitten bristles and hisses, ears back, at Charles, and Erik giggles. “I’ll protect you from her,” he vows, and falters, because perhaps a Westchesterian alpha doesn’t want to hear that a weak omega will keep him safe; but Charles just smiles and leans over to kiss his forehead and ignores the tiny yowls coming from the kitten as she’s trapped between their bodies.

“I know you will,” he murmurs, and Erik draws close, thinking of how he had been collared to keep from killing Charles in the night, thinks about assassins who might not be so scrupulous or in love, and how he _will_ protect Charles. From kittens and hands holding knives alike.  
  
  
  
Logan-the-kitten grows into Logan-the-cat (Logan-the-general huffs disapprovingly whenever he sees her, but Charles has seen him sneaking scraps to her under the table at supper), and Erik rounds and swells with child. He spars, though Hank looks like he’s about to have a fit of apoplexy whenever he takes at hit. He cares for Logan-the-cat. He makes little gifts for Charles, gold chains for him to wear around his neck, copper paperweights—Charles provides Erik with an endless stream of his favorite metals, and Erik seems to relish in manipulating them.

Charles sends an envoy to Genosha.

When Erik finds out, he asks, very small and apprehensive, “Are you sending me back?” and Charles knows that the scars of their first few months together will take longer to heal, but he still aches when he hurries to reassure Erik that no, of course not, Erik is _his_ , now and forever. Erik is so smart and funny and _alive_ when he’s not terrified out of his wits, and each day Charles falls further and further in love. But none of it compares to the day when the envoy rides back, and Charles leads Erik downstairs.

“I wanted to get you your own horse,” Charles says, because that’s not the surprise. “A Genoshan horse, one that’s used to being ridden the way you ride.” Erik has lit up, joy dancing along his expression, and Charles smiles to see it. “Our contact in Genosha was very helpful. Of course, you have free reign of the stables, so long as you take care and don’t try to run away again—”

Erik is vibrating with anticipation, and Charles leads him outside through the same door to the stables he’d used to escape. And there, waiting outside for him, is—

Erik says something in Genoshan that Charles’s telepathy can’t translate—a name—and rushes to the gray palfrey that the Genoshan horsemaster had assured their envoy was the prince’s favorite horse. The horse seems to recognize Erik, if the way it nuzzles into his embrace is any indication. Charles can feel Erik’s overwhelmed happiness rippling through the bond; he turns back to Charles, seemingly at a loss for words, but with the tears shimmering in his eyes telling Charles everything he needs to know.

“Can I ride him?” Erik finally asks breathlessly. Charles hesitates. He’s grateful that Erik is so happy, but— “I’m only five months pregnant,” Erik adds. “I’ve seen omegas ride until nine months, get off the horse, give birth, and get back on.”

“Well, you won’t be doing _that,”_ Charles mutters. “I—yes. Let me accompany you, yes? We’ll take a ride in the woods outside the city.

Erik beams.

A brief carriage ride takes them both to the outskirts of the city, the horses clopping behind. They’ll have a guard, of course, Alex and Armando and the King’s personal guard and four more guardsmen besides. Charles is helped into his special saddle by a well-practiced groomsman; Charles had secured for Erik a Genoshan saddle as well as a Genoshan horse, and Erik mounts easily, enthusiastically. Before Charles can stop him, he’s dug his heels into the sides of the horse, and is whooping with delight as the horse carries him deep into the woods. Charles curses and canters after him, but Erik outrides him; he’s too quick, darting in between the trees, unfamiliar terrain for a boy from the plains of Genosha, but he has good reflexes and an almost uncanny bond with his steed. By the time Erik allows Charles and the guards to catch up with him, Charles is sweating from exertion and stress, and Erik is laughing wildly, one hand resting on his belly, the other holding the reins, and his head thrown back and basking in the sunlight like he’s never seen beauty before this moment. And Charles is awfully, terribly, in love.  
  
  
  
Charles presses a kiss to each of Erik’s scars. _This one?_ he thinks, and Erik shudders as Charles’s breath ghosts across his hip.

 _A blade from a rival tribe caught me in the middle of a raid,_ Erik explains.

Charles shudders, and Erik can tell the thought of his omega in battle bothers him on a deep, fundamental level, but all he thinks is, _My brave warrior,_ and moves on to the long jagged patch of white on the side of his knee. _This one?_

 _My brother tripped me into a cooking fire,_ Erik says, amusement coloring the words. The ache in his heart where his missing family once lived still hurts, but his heart has grown, made room for Charles and the babe, and he no longer feels so hollowed out and lifeless. Charles presses a disapproving kiss to his knee, and continues moving downward. _Can I ask you something?_

Charles pauses. _About my leg?_

_Yes._

_It was a riding accident,_ Charles thinks. _I was very young. You see why I sometimes get—concerned—when you ride—_

 _Yes,_ Erik thinks, remorse coloring his thoughts. _I see. But I’m very careful, Charles. I would never endanger the baby._

 _I know,_ Charles thinks, _I know._ He leans up and with his fingers lifts Erik’s jaw up so he can kiss him, plunder his mouth as though Erik is concealing secret treasures inside of himself. Erik lets himself surrender to Charles, to his alpha; his knees fall apart, he brackets Charles’s body between his thighs, and Charles touches him, touches him on his scars and elsewhere, until Erik is shivering with the heat sparking from his body, until slick is oozing out from his hungry, clenching hole. Charles has been rubbing his cock against the crease of his thigh while Erik’s body prepares itself, and when he slides in—Erik’s body bucks and he remembers to bite down on his arm instead of screaming just in time. Charles chuckles and presses a gentle kiss of thanks to his hair.

Heat burns throughout him, like a brand. Charles fucks him with an intensity and a focus that Erik ascribes to battle—as though Erik is the only thing in the world that matters, the only thing in the world that exists—his hard cock driving deeply into Erik’s cunt, lighting up all the nerve endings and pleasure centers that make him omega, that make him born and bred to this. Erik moans, low, trying to contain himself in spite of the way Charles is making him feel wild with pleasure, out of his supposedly civilized mind with it. “Charles,” he gasps. Charles kisses him—a much more enjoyable way of shutting him up than the gag—and just in time, as he thrusts into Erik in such a manner that makes him cry out and come, his body trying to clench down on a knot that has only just started to grow. Erik lies there, tired and limp, as Charles continues to work his body, until he, too, comes, his knot tying them together, Erik’s exhausted inner walls milking him slowly, his sore muscles protesting every time he ripples around the knot.

Charles collapses on him. Erik, in the tradition they’ve begun of telling each other secrets, mind-to-mind, after coupling, tells him, _I thought you’d hate me. A consolation prize for a lost war, only here to lessen the humiliation of defeat by giving the King something to fuck._

Charles hesitates. _Erik… I don’t know what Shaw told you, but… your presence here seals a military alliance that has enabled us to open negotiations with the Isle of the Sky._

 _But I’m not a prince,_ Erik protests. _Shaw doesn’t care about me._

 _But your people do,_ Charles tells him gently. _If Sky attacks, I have it on… very good authority—not Shaw’s—that the Genoshans will stand by us. Shaw might have thought he was throwing you away as a concession for Westchester to save face, but I think it more likely he lied to you. In exchange for the gold and grain, we bolster our military strength. Through you. Were it not for you, there would be no deal. There would be no peace._

Erik can say nothing, can think of nothing. Charles kisses him again.

 _I thought you wanted rid of the baby,_ Charles admits. Erik shudders. Charles sighs. _That’s why I didn’t tell you sooner—I knew it would hurt you—but I could think of no other reason why you were sparring when you knew you were pregnant. And that colored everything I did afterward, I’m afraid._

 _I love them,_ Erik thinks fiercely. _I would die for them._

 _I know, darling, I know. It was the first thing I felt of your beautiful mind, how much you wanted to keep them safe._  
  
  
  
When Erik is nearly eight months pregnant and big as a moon, Charles puts his foot down and demands that he stop riding and sparring. So Erik begins to attend court instead.

Charles translates for him, and he doesn’t speak much at first. But the motions of it are familiar. Roughly half the court is the King seeing audiences from the peasantry, and this he is familiar with—hunger and a request for aid here, a murder dispute there—it is very similar to the kind of work his father had done as chieftain. The other half of the court, nobles squabbling over tax levies and military duties, are less familiar and eminently boring, but, as with chess, Charles teaches him how each petty argument has a role to play in the functioning of the court, and he slowly pays more attention over time. It helps that slowly, slowly, Westchester is grinding to war with the Isle of the Sky.

It’s not his fault, Jean and Charles reassure him. The negotiations were going poorly even before Jean was called away. Erik stares out the high window and wonders if Charles will let him into battle when the babe is born.

Charles brings up the idea of a wet nurse. Erik’s fury is legendary.

Hank is ecstatic over how big Erik is for how far along he is; he hypothesizes that perhaps Genoshan omegas are sturdier than Westchesterian ones. A week shy of nine months after his mating, they discover that Hank’s hypothesis is wrong.  
  
  
  
Erik looks at the babies—babies!—clinging to each other in the crib and feels happiness, deep and potent, suffuse him. They won’t be lonely, as he feared that one child alone in a dangerous court might be. They’ll have each other. Charles hovers over the omega twins with a besotted expression that Erik has never seen before on his face. The girl reaches out and smacks her brother on the nose; the boy starts crying. Charles, hushing him, reaches over and picks him up, and the boy settles in Charles’s arms. Logan-the-cat stares dubiously at the crib perched in her favorite sun spot, but Erik fancies he sees a certain softness in her gaze.

Erik, meanwhile, has never felt more at peace in his life. He leans back in the bed, sun caught in his hair, and listens to the babble of his family all around him.

**Author's Note:**

> I am at tumblr as [homoethics](https://homoethics.tumblr.com/). Please comment; constructive criticism welcome.


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